A Vertical Beer For A Vertical Bike Ride
Stone Vertical Epic Ale 09-09-09
Assuming we aren’t underwater from all this rain we’re having in Atlanta, I’m planning on riding my toughest century ride of the year this coming Sunday, The Six Gap Century. The route runs up, over, and around 6 mountain passes (called gaps). The end result is 102+ miles and 11,000+ vertical feet of climbing! It just happens that Stone Brewing released their 2009 edition of their “Vertical Epic” series of beers on September 9th ( 09-09-09). I figured this would be a perfect beer to have as I cleaned and tuned up my bike in preparation for the ride:
The beer poured a super dark brown and had a nice mocha colored head and fantastic lacing. The aroma and taste were very good but had a lot of things going on at once and that hurt my overall impression of the beer a bit. There was chocolate, orange, vanilla, coffee, and alcohol in both the smell and taste. As the beer warmed up a bit I got a lot of banana components which came from the yeast they used. Drinkability was hurt a little by the alcohol being so prominent.
The Vertical Epic was a very good beer but I think it will be a great beer with some age. I’ve got 1 extra bottle and I plan on picking up another one if I can so I can compare it over the next couple of years. It’s another good offering from the people at Stone. Get this beer if you can and try it for yourself.
Here’s the score:
1. Appearance- 9 points (out of 10)
2. Smell- 7 points (out of 10)
3. Taste- 16 points (out of 20)
4. Drinkability- 7 points (out of 10)
Total 39 (out of 50) Points-4 Mugs
Great review. I think it would be great if you did a video on the topic of aging beers — some “tips and tricks”, talk about past experiences with aging beer (did a specific beer age really well? Did a beer turn out pretty bad after aging it?) I think it would be a very interesting video for us beer lovers to enjoy.
To add to my idea, maybe show us a brief walkthrough of beers you are currently aging and how long you have been aging them. Just something any beer geek would enjoy watching
I just picked up 3 bottles of this earlier today. I will drink 1 today, and store the other two away for a year or two down the road. Interesting how the description on this bottle says it is intentionally for aging, and for doing a “vertical tasting” on 12/12/12 with all beers from this series. Too bad this is the first of the series I have even seen, looks like I missed out
Anyway, looking forward to the aging beer video.
Hi Chris,
Good idea about doing a video on aging beers! I have a small fridge that I’ve been using and have only become “serious” about aging beer since early this year. As a result I don’t have a lot, yet, but I plan on adding to the collection over time. I did a “tour of my beer cellar” a few months ago, maybe I’ll do an update along with some info on aging in general.
Yeah, I missed out on the first 7 of the series as well. I picked up an extra bottle on Saturday so now I have 2 extra as well. It will be interesting to see how they age.
I’ll thinka bout the aging beer video a bit, maybe I can get something done in the next couple weeks.