Stone Smoked Porter with Chipotle Peppers

Brewed By: Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California

Purchased: 22oz bomber bought at Capone's Liquor & Food in Chicago, IL; 2014

Style/ABV: American Porter, 5.9% 
Reported IBUs: 53

Tonight's beer was just sitting on shelves, saying "tick me, bro." I've already dabbled wit Stone's Smoked Porter, which is really good. The Stone Smoked Porter with Vanilla Beans is even better. 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. 

The Stone Smoked Porter with Chipotle Peppers is the brainchild of Chris Carroll, who in 2006, suggested producing a one-off version of the Stone Smoked Porter brewed with the addition of chipotle peppers. Stone describes this beer as a "deep, roasty quaff," which is also how I describe going down on Serena Williams. Let's get this into a glass and do that adjunct bench press. 

Stone Smoked Porter with Chipotle Peppers

This one pours out like a Porter or Brown Ale. The shocker here is the three-fingers plus of dense, sustaining head. The head takes on root beer float consistency, and has that cola-brown color. The body of the beer is also hinting towards a dark brown or ruby red in low light. In bright light the beer is a just slightly hazy reddish-orange color, it's kind of murky and swampy, like port side storage containers. The head is hanging around, and there be lacing ahead. 

This one smells surprisingly sweet from the onset. I'm getting big toast, dusty cocoa, lactose chocolate, nuttiness, nutty coffee, hazelnut, and coffee sweetness. There's also an earthy element to the coffee aroma which is nice. There's a hint of earthy ash and smoke on the aroma as well. Noteably absent on this beer's aroma is the smell of chipotle or pepper. I'm not getting any in the aroma. If you handed this to me blind and told me to judge it based on aroma alone, I'd be SOL. 

Mild spice is the name of the game here, with tingly chipotle massaging the sides of your tongue and building towards a peppery finish that drops salty jalapenos, green peppers, and chipotle goodness on the back of your throat. It's a blast of refined and constrained pepper to your tonsils, if you still have them. The base beer is given plenty of room to do its thing, with lots of Brown Ale/Porter-esque goodness. There's plenty of toast, caramel, cocoa, sweet chocolate, nuttiness, and subtle coffee notes at work here. The peppery heat is a nice counterpoint to this beer's somewhat one-dimensional sweetness, but those are the ropes in Porter country. 

As a general rule of thumb, I am better than everyone. People complaining about this beer's heat are wrong and should try some of Stone's Crime. People complaining about this being too light should note that this is a gentle beer, really. The 5.9% goes undetected, and I'd almost dare say this is pretty accessible both in terms of drinkability and sessionability. I don't want to jump the gun on potential food pairings, but this beer seems like it would really go well with some chocolate cake, mole sauce, bacon, chili, clam chowder (per Stone's website), ribs, grilled meats, and big ass burgers. It's kind of a foodie beer, certainly a beer with purpose. It's the adjuncts. Anyway...palate depth and complexity are both pretty good, and this one has that medium-light mouthfeel with nice carbonation and tingly pepper heat that moves things along. If there was ever a case for Ales > Dunkler Bocks, this beer might be it. Up front: rich cocoa, dusty chocolate, nuttiness, coffee; the mids roll into more cocoa and coffee, toast, growing pepper heat; the back end continues with the cocoa, nuttiness, earthy coffee, ash, and big green pepper, jalapeno, and chipotle show up to punch the back of your throat. I'm digging this.

Rating: Above-Average (4.0/5.0 Untappd)

This is a very Strong Above-Average. This is the perfect example of how you can balance adjuncts against a really solid base beer. Both the Stone Smoked Porter with Chipotle Peppers and the Stone Smoked Porter with Vanilla Bean are an improvement over the base beer, in my humble opinion. This is a somewhat mild and manageable beer, but I suspect it will really work with the aforementioned food pairings. If you appreciate pepper heat, check this beer out. Yeah, it's somewhat spicy. But it's nothing like the abominations that Crime and Punishment are. This is a solid Porter, and you could do much worse at around $5.99~7.99 per bomber.

Random Thought: I debated drinking this tonight because I picked up some hoppy beers that I don't want to camp on for too long, but I think I made the right choice. I'm not sure how chipotle peppers hold up with time, but I have to image they drop off. 

Stone Crime

Brewed By: Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California

Purchased: 16.9oz/500ml bottle bought at Evolution Wine & Spirits in Chicago, IL; 2013

Style/ABV: American Strong Ale/Chile Beer, 9.6% 
Reported IBUs: 102

Tonight's beer has been getting absolutely shit-panned on Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate for being too hot. I'm a huge fan of spicy foods, so it was with more than morbid curiosity that I found myself purchasing the Crime. Will it live up to the hype/hate? 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. 

When people say, "I like spicy food," they probably don't mean that they are pepper masochists. I'm a pepper masochist. I enjoy trying hot sauces that push the Scoville limit. I'm a fan of ghost peppers and other unholy chilies. Bring on the heat, baby.

I was surprised when I started to do my homework about this beer. According to THIS blog post and THIS blog post, Stone's Crime is brewed with jalapeños and black nagas. The black naga is nuthin' to fuck with. These are peppers in the same class as the Bhut Jolokia and the Trinidad Scorpion. These are not gentle peppers. These are not jalapeños. 

I'm guessing this beer is legitimately hot.

The Crime's base beer is the Lukcy Basartd Ale (a blend of Arrogant Bastard, Double Bastard, and OAKED Arrogant Bastard). The Crime is then aged in American Oak; specifically, Kentucky Bourbon Barrels. The Crime uses "mid-level-heat" red and green jalapeños, "ultra-hot" black nagas, Caribbean red hots, and Moruga scorpions and fatalis. Can you say "owe, my fundie hole." This insane beer was bottled on October 2013, and clocks in at 9.6% and 102 IBUs.

Stone Crime

What a fucking disaster this was...the cork was cemented into the bottle, and I broke it in half trying to remove it. I ended up having to manually remove the cork with a wine opener, which agitated the beer and consequently lead to some gushing. The beer itself pours into a cloudy, dark red body, and kicks up two or three fingers of red-tinted head. This is a dirty beer, with obscene amounts of sediment floating around in the reddish/orange body (per bright light). Surprisingly a layer of orange-tinted head is hanging around, and there's plenty of lacing. 

On the aroma...aggressive peppers that have been cut open, seeds exposed, on your chopping board. Lordy Jesus, the peppers on this beer's aroma are intense. This is...Julius Peppers in his prime. I'm getting aggressive habanero, jalapeno, green pepper, dry heat, salt, some fruity pepper notes, and something more spicy and more sinister than habanero lurking beneath. If you camp out on the aroma for a little bit, you DO pick up some oak, oak/vanilla sweetness, and a little bit of the base beer. I'm getting some mild hops and citrus resin on the aroma beneath the waves of aggressive pepper.

I guess...cheers? I dunno why I'm nervous. Bottoms up, bitches. Wow...this is fucking spicy. My first sip was INTENSE. As it goes with spicy foods. It takes a bit for your palate to adjust to the extreme heat. My first sip was overwhelmed with heat, but I will say this has great duration on the back end. Aside from the salty-spicy heat, I'm getting the base beer in the mix, which includes layers of oak, wood, and some nice hop resin. As the peppers unfold, you pick up jalapeno, green pepper, habanero, and burn. The burn is pretty intense...I'm surprised this beer has as much burn as I'm getting. 

I'm not a huge fan of this. I thought I was going to enjoy this a lot more, but it's one-dimensional, like biting into a hot pepper. The base beer is drowning in peppers, and the subtle oak and Lucky Bastard notes aren't enough to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, this isn't a condiment or pepper or sauce. This is a beer. It's also really hot...I'm surprised, because as noted above, I like to chase hot peppers. It's just not very drinkable. Palate depth is really good, but complexity is low. The mouthfeel is medium-full. I dunno...up front, mid-palate, and back palate all ride into pepper land. You get some subtle oak and Lucky Bastard mid-palate, and some nuanced pepper notes on the back end. I'm just totally over this.

Rating: Sewage (WTF did I just drink?) (1.0/5.0 Untappd)

Ah, the elusive Light  Sewage (WTF did I just drink?). It happens. I guess I expected more beer here and less pepper juice. While the spice levels in this beer are manageable for seasoned veterans, the beer itself lacks any logical direction. It's just...beer drowning in hot peppers. If that's your bag then godspeed, but in my opinion this is a salty, burning mess. All the subtlety happens somewhere in the mid and back palate, as you pick up some mild base beer and peppery notes...by then the intense burn is kicking in, and you ride salty heat to intense burn. I could see this beer working well in a sauce, so maybe cook with it? 16.9oz is way too much for one person, I recommend tackling this in 4oz or 6oz servings. This is an entertaining novelty, and I'm glad I checked it out. As far as beer goes, I would not buy this again, especially at the high price this sells for.

Random Thought: And here is what I don't get. Stone releases an impressively spicy beer like this, but their hot sauces are weak as hell. WTF is up with that? 

Pipeworks Chipotle Smoked Porter

Brewed By: Pipeworks Brewing in Chicago, IL  

Purchased: 22oz bottle (Batch #95) bought at Binny's in IL; 2013 (bottled 2.26.13)

Style/ABV: Smoked Porter, 7.5%
Reported IBUs: ?

The only thing I like better than a late night Unofficial Pipeworks Thursday™ is some nice copypasta. Tonight's beer is basically Pipeworks' Smoked Porter with the addition of some chipotle. Can you say yum? About Pipeworks:

Pipeworks has humble roots. The brewery was founded in Chicago in 2011 by Beejay Oslon and Gerrit Lewis. The duo were both homebrewers that met while while working at West Lakeview Liquors. In 2011, they began to raise money for their brewery using the online Internet site, Kickstarter. Olson and Lewis were both educated at De Struise Brewery in Oostvleteren, Belgium. With that knowledge, and the money from their kickstarter, Olson and Lewis created a unique brewery that is smaller in size, and intended to brew smaller batches of beer. The company's motto is "small batches, big beers." And indeed, since the brewery has been around, they've been releasing a lot of one-offs and small batch releases. The goal is to release a new beer every week. You can read more about the brewery at their website HERE.

The back of the bottle reads:

"For those crazy enough to think our smoked porter needed something more, we give you Chipotle Smoked Porter. In addition to the already bold character from the smoked malts, we bring the heat with a healthy dose of chipotle peppers to take this rich porter to the next level. Recommended pairing with a giant hunk of smoked meat and a big ass bon fire on a cold night."

There was no gushing or carb issues here. This beer pours into a dark brown/soda-black body, and kicks up a pinky's worth of dark khaki/tan head. The head quickly fizzles out, and the beer has crackly, soda-like carbonation. In bright light, this beer is a swampy and murky brown color, with some tingly carbonation dotting the surface of the beer. I've had quite a few Stouts/Porters brewed with peppers, and this beer looks and pours like many of them.

Pipeworks Chipotle Smoked Porter 

For a beer brewed early this year, there's still a lot of smoke on the aroma. I'm getting chocolate, roast, coffee, and lots of beechwood-y smoked malts. There's a lot of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, molasses, chocolate, and vanilla on this beer's nose. What I would peg as an earthy coffee note is probably the chipotle, and the aroma definitely has a peppery vibe, but I don't know if I would place it in a blind tasting.

Chipotles are smokey and spicy, so the addition of chipotle to this beer only adds another layer of complexity. I feel like this is more smokey than the Smoked Porter, and there's a nice pinch of heat on the back that you can feel in the back of your throat. It's not End of Days good, but it's good. You get earthy smoke and beechwood smoke up front, and there's lots of coffee, earthy dirt, earthy peppers, and chocolate in the mix. The chipotle kicks in towards the back, and you get peppery spice and chipotle smoke on the finish. The lingering flavors on the palate are spicy pepper and some chocolate-syrup. Vanilla is in the mix too.

This is solid. Being the spicy food aficionado that I am, I would preference this over the Smoked Porter. Palate depth is good, and complexity is okay. This is medium to medium-full bodied. The mouthfeel is made lighter thanks to some carbonation and tingly pepper spice. This has good drinkability, assuming you aren't some smoked-malt hating hoser, and the 7.5% ABV goes mostly unnoticed. It's all about the beechwood smoked malts up front; the middle hits coffee, dirt, peppers, and chocolate; the back end is all chocolate and peppery spice. The finish here is spicy...and malty. 

Rating: Above-Average (4.0/5.0 Untappd)

In the same vein as the Smoked Porter, I'll toss this a Strong Above-Average. This beer drinks like a smokey chocolate Stout or Porter, so the addition of the chipotle pepper is very welcomed. I'd love to see Pipeworks brew this again, or any of their Stouts with the addition of chipotle. If you can snag a bottle of this...go for it. I'm about to pair this beer with a sandwich, but as the bottle suggests, you could certainly pair this beer with some BBQ or grilled/smoked meats. This would also go well with some chocolate cake, or chocolate dipped churros. 

Random Thought: TGIFF.