Stone Stonewall Ale

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 10

Rated July 2011. StoneWall? StoneWall? Are you shittin’ me?!? Damn! Another white whale is had at this send-off tasting. That’s like 3 in a row for me. Awesome! Like Bass No 1 and Bells 6000 this one has been a prized want for years and years. Thanks to everyone involved! Pours a bit murky with dark copper body and white head. The aroma is modest in strength and offers up smooth spicy hops, some sweet stale citrus and then near the end of the draw pummeling boozy pine hops. The taste is smooth to start and then quickly ramps up into firm levels of pine hop flavor. To midway it picks up more and more pine hops as well as lesser amounts of spicy hops and sweet maltiness. It maintains a fairly smooth body from front to back. This is tasting great with just some mildly blunted notes here and there!

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 5 | Overall: 5

A gift from the brewer for participating in the Stone Wall project. Beer was enjoyed at a private party. It was a brownish-red pour with a 1" head (pour was restricted to 5oz). Aroma was a nice complex of dark malt, sugar, chocolate, fruit, and vanilla. The flavours were somewhat less complex with the malt coming through big time, followed by the alcohol. Very sweet.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

An (another) incredible Barleywine style ale from Stone...a special release we were lucky enough to get a taste of. Dark and malty, raisiny sweet in the best way, with enough hops to balance, but that's it. Great beer!