Stone 18th Anniversary IPA

Brewed By: Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California

Purchased: 22oz bottle bought at Walgreens in Chicago, IL; 2014 (Bottled on 084/04/2014)

Style/ABV: Imperial IPA, 8.5% 
Reported IBUs: 75

Oh man, I don't even know why I'm drinking this two months past the bottled-on date. I guess I'm just a beer hater, but whatever. About Stone:

Stone Brewing are one of the more prominent breweries in the American craft brewing scene. They were founded in 1996 in San Marcos, California, and moved to Escondido, California where they recently expanded their operations. Stone was founded by Steve Wagner and Greg Koch. Koch has a reputation among the craft beer community for voicing his opinion, not putting up with shit, and standing behind his beer. Also...farking woot and fizzy yellow beer is for bitches. 

How about that 18th Anniversary Ale? This one is brewed with El Dorado hops (they dry-hopped it with two pounds per barrel). This also features English Brown Coffee, Cara Munich, and Chocolate Wheat malts. This pours into a caramel-orange body that is surprisingly clear in bright light. It's very much a caramel-affair, with a finger of caramel-tinged head. There's good lacing and head retention, and carbonation. It looks very Stone. 

At 2 months past bottling, this has some faded iced tea hop notes. But it's not one-dimensional in that regard. I'm getting some earthy/herbal and medicinal notes, and big orange: orange juice, orange freezer pops, and big resinous pine. The big orange juice notes flirt with lemon. This smells dank as hell too. There are trace hints of some caramel/malt backings as well...although I'm not getting the coffee, cocoa, and roasted malts as described on Stone's website.

Stone 18th Anniversary IPA

This is very much Stone in the taste. The surprise here is the depth and complexity of the malt...the back end drops some really nice grain and malt characters on your palate. It tastes very much like how a brewhouse smells. And once you lock into that malty flavor, you can dig grain out of this, with biscuit, bread, and even some of the described coffee/toffee that was missing from the aroma. This is actually quite complex for an IPA, and if you served this to me blind and let me dwell on it, I would say/write very nice things. In a lot of ways, the malt complexity infuses a fresh, draft-like quality to this beer. I'm reminded of sessions at Solemn Oath. The hop notes in here lean towards orange, orange juice, lemon, and hints of pine/iced tea. This is balanced...not too sweet, not too bitter, not too dry. But it does finish relatively dry and clean. 

At 8.5%, this is pretty drinkable. Being an anniversary ale, and an anniversary IPA, you probably won't pick this up more than once. So this review is stupid. I realize that, but I'm mostly here for me. Anyway...this has good depth and complexity. Stone knows how to do many things well, but they mostly know how to cram a bunch of hops into a beer and make it taste solid. In that respect, this has above-average complexity thanks to the edition of the malts. This unravels with some good lemon, orange, and pine hops up front; that gives way to resinous pine and iced tea, with a little malt sweetness showing up; the back end drops the biscuit and bready malts, and subsequent sips unravel sweetened hops and malts, with fresh malts that add a nice touch of complexity. I can't fault this beer, but it's pretty par the course for Stone at this point.

Rating: Average (3.5/5.0 Untappd)

I'm feeling a Strong Average on this. Yup, I'm gonna toss this an average. But it's really like an Average+. The "+" comes from that nice malt depth. I'd recommend passing on this at this point, since it is now 2 months out from bottling. Grab some Enjoy By or Stone's classic IPA instead. But I'm happy to have Stone around doing their thing...I'm pairing this with homework. Ah, the life of a grad student, amirite?

Random Thought: What the fuck is going on with the Chicago Bears? Holy drama. Holy suck. I'm a sports radio guy and you're damn right I'll be tuning in to Boers and Bernstein tomorrow.