Mini Beercation Day #3 - Stone Brewery

Sorry about the lapse last week, got caught up in work.  Hey! It happens, work has to come first, not like anyone is paying me for my thoughts on beer...

After visiting Stone Brewery on my third day of Mini Beercation I wrote quite a bit on my phone notepad so that I would remember, in detail, all the glorious details of this stop.  Unfortunately, since then, I have had to reboot my phone and as a result have lost all those tasting notes...

However, if I were to try and recall what I wrote on that day, I think it would have gone something like this:

Glorious, magnificent, visionary!  If Port Pizza was a blast from a past, then surely Stone is a glimpse of the future.

Walking into this massive structure at the end of a desolate road in Escondido, one is reminded more of a four star hotel, or a Winery. The stone entryway and 30 foot high ceilings have the feeling of some renovated gothic castle.

The beer selection has a number of Stone's year round brews, as well as some great selections from other  craft breweries.

There are two bars, one inside and one outside, as well as gardens out back that they often setup a small bar in.  The whole place has a feeling of grandeur because of the high ceilings accompanied roll up glass walls that open out into the patio, making the place seem really large.  

What's really impressive though is how they use this space.  They hold events out in their garden or simply let you take a casual stroll through.  The night we were there, Stone was hosting a movie night (Airplane).  You really get the feeling that they're dedicated to fostering community.

I ordered a Sublimely Self-Righteous, which was amazing as always.

Stone's food menu is an obvious dedication to their own beer ethic.  In addition to all of the food being made with beer, they make a point of having only local and organic ingredients and dedicate themselves to bolstering their local community through slow food, industry, and money.  To put it in their own words: "At Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens, we use in-season, locally, regionally, and organically grown produce.  We do this not just for the simple principles of freshness and sustainability, but also because fresh, local and organic tastes better.  It’s also better for you and the world in which we live.  No, we’re not health nuts, we’re quality nuts!  The fact that actual real food is better for you than the “food-like” substances that folks commonly eat is beside the point."

Good enough for me, we started off with the Mac 'n Beer Cheese with sausage, which was pretty incredible.  This was actually as good as it looks, See?

Down to the last bite.

Megan ordered the Rosemary Crusted Pork Loin.

And I, surprisingly, got the 3 BBQ Duck Tacos.  I say surprisingly because with Stone's wonderful menu of Steaks and exotic flavors, Duck tacos might sound a little bland.  However, this couldn't be further from the case.  Stone makes a Chile de Arbol and Levitation Ale BBQ sauce on this creation, topped off with some habaneros and asiago cheese.  This dish was spicy and succulent, the sweetness of the duck was a perfect match for the spiciness of the sauce.  Truly incredible.  

Finally, we finished off with what we thought would be simple Chocolate Brownies.  Once again, Stone blew me away.  I forget what type of beer they used in these brownies, but they were seriously out of control.  

Stone was really the perfect place to cap off this trip.  As I sat there having an absolutely great time, I started thinking about the success they've had and their current expansions, most notably, the possible opening of a brewery in Europe.  It certainly seems like their setting an excellent example, not just for other craft breweries, but for the food and business as a whole: it is possible to be successful and adhere to the quality and ethics that you believe in and possibly got you to where you are.  I will definitely be making more trips down to this brewery, I'd advise you all to do the same.

The Shah Mat

For the few who live locally (in SoCal) and show interest in trying my homemade beers, you'll probably notice that it's been a while since I last revealed a new creation. In part, that's because my latest brew is by far my most ambitious and creative endeavor as of yet. But it would only be fair to say that with every great endeavor comes a unique set of problems, and this beer was certainly ripe with them.

After trying Stone's Self-Righteous and Deschuttes' Black Hole Sun, I thought it would be fun to try my own hand at a Black IPA. For those who are unfamiliar and don't wish to read some of my former posts, a Black IPA is a beer brewed with the potency and in the style of a regular IPA, but has a dark or black appearance like a stout. It's just one of the many new inventive styles that are being created by craft beer makers on the bleeding edge. I searched for a bit on the internet and was surprised at the relative few black IPAs that have been attempted. As such, there were only a handful of recipes, none of which I liked. So I decided to take the basic structure of my recipe for Gamma Ray's Bitter Burst (an IPA I made in the spring and was quite happy with) and replace the grain bill with higher luvibond grains.

The recipe:

9 lbs of pale ale malt extract

Grain bill:

8 oz Crystal 40L

4 oz British Chocolate

4 oz Carafa III

White Labs WLP001 California Ale yeast

From Alpha beta hop farm

Rounding out this creation were some relatively fresh hops I got from the Alpha Beta hop farm, which is an organic hop farm in Ashland, where I'm from. I visited the farm back in the fall, and wrote a short post about it here. Steve was nice enough to give me about 3 oz of Cascade and 2 oz of Nugget. Since I had whole hops to work with I decided to try the additions in multiple stages throughout the boil. I've heard of Dogfish Head doing similar types of additions with their 60, 90, and 120 minute IPAs and thought I'd give it a try.

From Alpha beta hop farm

My hop schedule:

80 min 1 oz Nugget

60 min 1/2 oz Nugget

45 min 1 oz Cascade

25 min 1 oz Nugget

10 min 1/2 oz Cascade

0 min 1/2 oz Cascade

From Alpha beta hop farm

Finally, I added about a 1/2 oz of Nugget to dry hop after about a month of fermentation. Since these hops weren't completely dry, you could call it a wet hop, but since they were no longer fresh, I think it's more accurate to say dry hop.

From Alpha beta hop farm

I dry hopped for a month before bottling, and then let the bottles sit for an additional month for a little extra aging. I finally tried this beer in mid-December and was pretty disappointed at the skunky taste that could be best described as drinking a wet moldy sponge that dominated the beer. Now I've made bad batches of beer before and to be honest it took me four tries before I was able to eliminate the skunkiness that often dominates novice home brews. But this taste was very strong and entirely different than the trouble I'd had early on. If I had used a Belgian yeast I could have attributed the taste to the effects of a wild strain, but I had used the California Ale Yeast, which I've had a lot of luck with in the past.

I noticed with my first dry hop, The Resistance, that it really took about a month or more in the bottle to even out the taste and it continued to round out over the following months. With that in mind, I decided to play the waiting game with my Black IPA, hoping that the wet sponge, processed avocado taste would eventually work itself out of the beer.  Here's a picture of me tasting it.  For those curious about the mustache, you'll have to wait until the reveal of my next beer to find out what that's about.

So while we wait, here's a little background on the name I chose. Shah Mat comes from 6th century Persia meaning "the king is helpless/ambushed." It is the origin of our much more well-known phrase, "checkmate." A big motivation behind, and ingredient in, this beer was the fresh hops I received from Alpha Beta. While their name undoubtedly refers to alpha and beta acids found in the hop flower, I wanted to credit them indirectly for making the beer possible. Alpha beta can also refer to alpha beta pruning, which is a search algorithm commonly used in machine playing of two player games, notably, tic tac toe and chess. Since my preferred color of play in chess is black, it only seemed natural to name this black ipa after the hops and algorithm that made it a winner.

One problem though, so far it wasn't a winner. After two more weeks in the bottle there was some improvement in the taste, but not enough to my liking. I waited an additional two weeks, and saw continued improvement, but still lingering hints of a taste I didn't like. I was just about to cross this brew off as a failure, when I happened to stumble across the Brewdog Bashah at the Daily Pint. Brewdog Bashah is a double black belgian IPA made by Brewdog and Stone. I can't say I was a huge fan of the brew, however, it did have the same funk that I had been finding in my beer. Not a huge consolation because it still tastes how it tastes, however, interesting to know that it may have been a grain hop combination that brought it about rather than a mistake on my part.

You may also notice that this is my first attempt at labels.  I based my rough design off some beautiful Dutch beers I saw while in Amsterdam and in that vein named my "brewery," Brouwerij De Isser.  In case you can't read the text in this picture, the labels say: "Shah Mat comes from the Persian phrase meaning 'The King is Ambushed,' and is thought to be the origin of the word checkmate.  This handcrafted ale is brewed and dry hopped with organically grown Cascade and Nugget hops from Alpha Beta Hop Farm in Ashland, Oregon."

And that's the story of the Shah Mat. Love to get peoples' thoughts on the beer and the possible reasons for the taste.