Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Vertical Epic: The Numerologist's Delight

09/09/09- The day when the sky turns crimson, the seas boil, and Will Smith must again save the world from malicious aliens. And Transformers. And COBRA. And the Freemasons.

For the beer lovers, 09/09/09 means the release of Stone's Vertical Epic, a 22 oz. only annual release that varies yearly in style. The Vertical Epic line started 02/02/02, and will culminate 12/12/12, after which the world will end. The 02 and 03 versions have sold for hundreds of dollars, as people have been trying to fill their collections in order to do a vertical tasting of all the years, or make some big bucks by selling the collection to a crazy person. The beer is always a variation on a Belgian style- 07/07/07 was a Belgian Strong Ale, 08/08/08 a Belgian IPA. This year's is described as a Belgian Porter, which should be quite interesting as Porters are uncommon in the Belgian beer genre. The beer starts with the usual Belgian ingredient of candy sugar, then goes Stone-like with the addition of six different malts (including chocolate), vanilla bean, and tangerine peel. It is finished off with aging on French oak chips. The result is a 8.6% beer backed up with 50 IBUs, and should be a big seller throughout the year. Kelly's, Quarters, Jubilation, Whole Foods, and Sunflower all will have the beer at varying prices. I paid $6.99 at Jubilation. Vertical Epic 09/09/09- As Will Smith would say, "Welcome to Earth!"

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