Kick Off The Weekend With Wine Gourmet’s All Stone Tasting

Eight highly rated beers will be available at Wine Gourmet’s Friday evening (5p to 8p) beer tasting this week, more than reason enough to come by the store. But this week’s tasting offers a slightly different approach than most. As most have heard by now, the well known California based Stone Brewing is considering locations for an East Coast location, and Roanoke appears to be in the running. As a way to introduce (or remind) the craft curious in Roanoke just how well made the brewery’s beers are, and to bring attention to the Star City’s interest in having the brewery open here, all eight beers which Wine Gourmet will have this week will be Stone beers.

Available beers for tasting will include Stone’s Enjoy-By 4.20 IPA, IPA, Russian Imperial Stout, Stochasticity Project Grapefruit Slam, Pale Ale, Cali-Belgique, Sublimely Self Righteous, and Matt’s Burning Rosids (Smoked Cherrywood Imperial Saison). As far as some of these individual beers go, first, do not miss the Grapefruit Slam, which is exactly that, an IPA infused with tons of fresh grapefruit peel, and is something that I described recently as tasting “like someone painstakingly wrung out whatever liquid could be rendered from a massive amount of grapefruit zest and peel into your glass”. One might think it makes perfect sense, putting grapefruit peel on top of a beer in which the hops might normally give it plenty of flavors resembling the fruit anyhow, but until you’ve tasted it, I wouldn’t write off that you might know how well it’s done. The grapefruit is front and center, with little malt sweetness to stand in its way, and makes for perhaps a bit of a different IPA than you might have tasted so far from Stone. Some have considered the current version of Enjoy-By to be one of the best in the monthly released series so far. Aromas of tropical fruit headline the aroma and then can be found within the beer, rimming a solid punch of bitterness throughout the flavor, yet it all seems to give way to an attention stealing amount of “dankness” running throughout the beer. And should any of us forget just how good Stone’s “standard” IPA is (first of all, shame on us), the tasting gives many of us who’ve perhaps had the beer in the past a chance to revisit a darn fine, satisfying, hop-spicy IPA.

But these are only some of my own thoughts about just a few of the beers which will be available at tomorrow’s all Stone tasting at Wine Gourmet. Come out, do some tasting, and form your own opinions about these great beers – and help show Stone Brewing how much we truly enjoy them here in the Star City. Oh, and while you’re at it, consider taking a second to snap a few shots too, and share them on the Facebook page dedicated to helping bring the brewery our way, which you can find here.

Cheers!