Vertical Epic ’05 vs. ’06

The brewmasters at Stone fancy themselves storytellers. The Vertical Epic project, for those not familiar with it, attempts to create a lineage of bottle-conditioned beers as epic as anything Homer ever wrote, by releasing a new specialty ale 1 year, 1 month and 1 day from the last. This fucked-up brewing fantasy began on February 2, 2002 ( or 2/2/02) and will continue, presumably, until December 12, 2012 (or 12/12/12). Get it?
And while we first encountered the Vertical Epic series back in 2003, the idea of cellar-aging this sweet San Diego nectar back then seemed cruel and unusual. Maybe our beer brains have evolved, or maybe it’s that we finally have access to something that even remotely resembles a cellar, but we’ve finally opened our eyes to the wide-reaching implications of what Stone is trying to do.
One of us (Alex) even had the foresight to squirrel a bottle of the 5/5/05 ale away, so as soon as this year’s was released we thought it high-time for a little history lesson.
In the case of last year’s ale, it’s either taking it’s sweet time to develop or was just a mellowier year in the scheme of things. The bottle hints at a sort of step back to the basics: a less spicy, less hoppy, nutty ale that touches on the Belgian ale tradition. The beer has a fairly plain wheat aroma and a clean, slightly choco-caramel softness. Nothing so bold as you’d expect from a specialty Stone brew, especially after a year of swirling in its own juices. To be honest it was a little too Amish for our tastes. But then again, 2005 kinda sucked so…
The 6/6/06 brew was appropriately wicked, shooting out anise and clove like bats out of hell. The extremely rich, black velvet texture made for a darker-than-dark ale. Think depressed, ascetic trappist monks brewing in a fury. What’s scarier is this delicious dried-fruit concoction is only weeks old. The head brewer at Stone had this to say: “complex…not sure how it will develop.” We say “Hail Satan!”