My wife Kiki is great because she always thinks of me. This beer is thanks to her. I've only reviewed Stone once before and that was their Double Bastard Ale. Kiki and I toured their brewery but that was before I had the blog so I'll have to go back and tour it again so I can do a post.
For those of you who don't know, Stone Brewing Co. is based out of Escondido, California in northern San Diego County. Steve Wagner and Greg Koch met in the late-80s, re-met in the early-90s, and convinced some investors to give them money so they could open a brewery in 1996. Now the brewery has grown to 55,000 square feet, has a 120 bbl (barrels) brewing system, and in 2010 made 115,000 bbls of beer (1 bbl is 31 gallons so that translates into over 3.5 million gallons of beer). Stone even has its own restaurant, the "Stone World Bistro & Gardens," which is a little pricey but worth the money for the quality of the food which is locally grown ("slow food") and DELICIOUS (I highly recommend that you try the Bison Steak, and Kiki likes the Spud Buds).
Without further ado: Old Guardian Belgo Barley Wine. One of my first questions was, "What does 'Belgo' mean?" In short, Stone took their regular Old Guardian and put Belgian yeast into the the batch. When it turned out really good, they decided they would make it every other year as, "odd beers for odd years." Well, by popular demand they are still making the regular Old Guardian instead of rotating every other year.
Taste: to me this beer was really hoppy on the nose (it is 85 IBU's after all), then it's bitter towards the end and it has a long malty linger. This beer is like hops and malts on steroids. Huge body, some hints of spices, and the hoppiness makes it a little sweet.
Its 12% ABV. Yeah. That's almost three times of Bud Light. Besides the fact that it's not But Light, the nice thing about this beer is that the high alcohol content means the beer can improve with age. If you fancy yourself a connoisseur, this would be a nice beer to keep around for a while.
If you have any inclination to try different beers or any appreciation for barley wine style ales, this is the beer for you to check out.
In conclusion, this is a great beer to sip and enjoy so I give it five out of five stars.
One final note: on the back of the bottle, CEO and co-founder Greg Koch writes about how Europeans are even more clueless about craft beers than Americans. I'm not surprised with global corporations running ridiculously huge marketing campaigns, making younger generations clueless that there is anything else out there. Anyway, Stone has been looking into opening a brewery in Europe for roughly a year and a half. From what I've seen Stone treats their employees well and produces a high quality product so I hope they're successful.
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