Filed under: IPA (shaker, tulip), Stone | Tags: amazing, banana, bitter, brilliant, citrus, crisp, delicious, fruit, golden, grapefruit, hoppy, nice, pine, sweet, wheat
Stone Cali-Belgique IPA
Style; glass: IPA; tulip
22 fl oz x 6.9% ABV = 151.8 / 60 = 2.53 beers * 150 C = 379.5 calories (est.)
Purchased at: Canal’s Lawrenceville for $7.99
Aroma: sweet, banana and cloves, some citrusy hops, pine, grass.
Visuals: packaging is beautiful, though screen printing always seems to be coming off the bottle. It gives the brand a bit of crumbly marble style, though I wonder if it’s intentional? Perhaps the most brilliant IPA I’ve ever seen, absolutely crystal clear. Like the final scene in THX 1138, it’s that bright sunlight. Golden, pale, transparent, bright white head, sticky fresh Belgian lace. Carbonation is continuous.
Taste: Delicious, sweet, and hoppy. A great blend, very much in the spirit of Chouffe’s Hobblon Dobblen (sp?). Expertly balanced, nice easygoing maltiness, great hops. Perhaps my favorite new session brew.
Palate: Crisp, clean, and refreshing. A dream of fusion of two of my favorite styles. I hope they develop an imperial of this. Starts very sweet, crisp, middle has a bit of a burn and slight roastiness, finish is hops and bitterness with a salty sweet end note. Amazing.
Overall: In terms of lighter brews and more reasonable ABVs, this is a clear winner, and easily my favorite IPA at the moment, and very much a favorite all around, though my top honor still goes to Mikkeller for Black. I’m going to get more, soon. Stone, just keep them coming, and please consider an imperial version of this.
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10 Comments so far
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I found myself also smitten with this beer. Enough so that I brewed up a clone batch, based on the recipes they recently published in Brew Your Own for the IPA, then brewed using Belgium yeast according to the bottle. – Jesse
Comment by Jesse 02/10/2009 @ 8:38 AMI’d really love to homebrew. I just need to get the equipment, hunker down, and do it.
Comment by lemasney 02/10/2009 @ 2:46 PMInstead of guessing at the nutrtional values of the beers you review, pick up a copy of “Does My BUTT Look BIG In This BEER? Nutritional Values of 2,000 Worldwide Beers”
Moderation, not deprivation!
P.S. Is it just me or is it hard to read the blog text because of the black background? And I’m sober when I’m writing this!
Comment by Bob Skilnik 02/10/2009 @ 1:57 PMI’ll take a look at the book. Does Stone make their nutritional info available? Because, you may not know this, but not everyone releases their nutritional information. Sometimes you just have to develop a method for guessing, rather accurately.
Comment by lemasney 02/10/2009 @ 2:57 PMRegarding legibility, I appreciate the feedback. You may want to try ctrl-+ or use an overriding style sheet.
I attempted to get nutritional info on Stone’s brews last year. Greg at the brewery advised they don’t keep the info, as it varies. I even tried to get the info out of them on my last visit out there and no luck (doesn’t stop me from drinking them…)
Comment by cigolio 04/07/2009 @ 12:09 AMThanks, Cigolio! Yeah, I can understand that the artisan’s hand might be shaky with the sugar, or the brewer’s clock might let the yeast eat too long, but if the OG and FG and ABV and other numbers can be stable and reported, the calories can be reported. I can see wholeheartedly why they might not want to show that a bottle of great beer can contain a quarter of a day’s worth of calories, but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t do it anyway. Stone rocks. I’d drink their brews no matter how many calories they are. I don’t like that I have to guess at it though. Sigh.
Comment by lemasney 04/15/2009 @ 12:39 AMNutritional values always vary. One batch will never duplicate the numbers of another batch and that’s why the TTB allows a range of acceptance, all explained in my book.
I’ll bet that if a lot brewers didn’t know what was in the cereal that they were feeding there children or even the formula that their babies were drinking…they’d be up in arms.
If I eat it or drink it, I want to know what’s in the product. As a student of history, is anyone here aware of the cobalt poisoning of beer that took place some decades ago? People died, not because of any deliberate attempt, but simply because a cobalt compind was allowed to aid in head retention. How about the over abundance of nitrates that were discovered in beer during the 1970s? These discoveries radically changed much about the old malting process and what additivies (at the time) could be used in beer. Do you really feel OK with the idea of throwing Polyclar (ground up plastic), for instance, in your homebrew? Do you know for a fact that it’s all filtered out (or not)?
All of this, however, is moot. The TTB is preparing labeling standards that will eventually be required on all alcoholic beverages. Instead of fighting and moaning about all of this, start preparing for it. There are a good number of successful craft and regional breweries that now have nutritional info for their products on hand, jst waiting. They are successful because they understand the market; they understand that the government can take away your priveleges in making beer. It’s not a right.
Gloabalization is another factor. Right now, the EU is working on standardizing labels on all alcoholic products and they are pressuring those outside the EU to follow along. It could come to the point where US drink products would find themselves unwelcome in other countries.
Here’s a list of additives allowed by the EU in wine (maybe beer too but I’m not sure), mostly as filtering agents. How much is filtered out? How much stays behind? Of course, EU beers and wines are avialable here in the U.S., but I don’t doubt that some of this stuff isn’t used over here too;
tartaric acid
calcium tartrate
betaglucanase
lactic bacteria
ion exchange resins
potassium ferrocyanide
calcium phytate
lysozyme
dimethyldicarbonate
urease
oxygen
lees
oak wood
sulphur dioxide
calcium sulphate
sucrose
yeast cell walls
carbon dioxide
ascorbic acid
citric acid
copper sulphate
charcoal
diammonium phosphate
ammonium sulphate
ammonium sulphite
ammonium bisulphite
thiamine hydrochloride
polyvinylpolypyrrolidone
calcium tartrate
calcium phytate
lysozyme
dimethyldicarbonate
argon
nitrogen
potassium bisulphite
potassium metabisulphite
gelatin
plant proteins
isinglass
casein
potassium caseinate
ovalbumin (egg white)
lactalbumin,
bentonite
silicon dioxide or colloidal solution
kaolin
tannin
pectinolytic enzymes,
sorbic acid or potassium sorbate
potassium tartrate
potassium bicarbonate
calcium carbonate
carbon dioxide
acacia (gum arabic)
calcium alginate
potassium alginate
allyl isothiocyanate
yeast mannoproteins
Comment by Bob Skilnik 04/15/2009 @ 10:59 AMWe get it Bob, you wrote this book. If you give me a free copy, I’ll review it.
Honestly, I’m glad you wrote it, and every time you post here I’m a little more convinced you have some idea of what the @#$%^* you’re talking about.
Comment by lemasney 04/15/2009 @ 12:56 PMI’m out of hard copies at the moment. Send me an e-mail and confirmation who you are (I usually wind up with 10 people who swear it’s their website when I do this), and I’ll send you a PDF of the book. You could be reading it in minutes.
Bob
Comment by Bob Skilnik 04/15/2009 @ 1:19 PMHey, Bob, that’s very generous of you! I’m lemasney at gmail dot com, and if there’s still any question, look at my contact info on the sidebar of my twitter page. I am quite genuinely interested in your book, and I’d love to sing its praises. You know my stance on your topic.
Comment by lemasney 04/15/2009 @ 3:46 PM