Posted By: Melissa Ward

Escondido, Calif.-based Stone Brewing Co. is brewery with some wild ideas banging around in the collective heads of Greg Koch, Mitch Steele and the other Stone Brewers. One of those exceptionally wild (and successful) ideas is the Stone Vertical Epic Series, running from 01•01•01 to 12•12•12.

Designed with a massive vertical tasting in mind for 2012, Stone puts one of these beers out each year. Some of the earlier years, which some of us (me) may have missed can be found on sites like eBay, but Stone does it one better for those who want to make up for what they missed out on: the brewery offers a homebrew recipe for each of the vertical ales. Check out the recipe for 02•02•02—talk about awesome!

Now, it’s not my plan to brew all the beers I missed in the series, but when Vertical Epic 09•09•09 came out, I was sure to purchase 2 bottles: one for immediate consumption, and one to be cracked a year later (now). And here are my thoughts:

09•09•09 is the 8th in the Stone series, and is described on the front of the bottle as “an ale brewed with spices” (way to be descriptive). Spinning the bottle around to the back, you can read about Stone’s goal of making this beer reminiscent to artisanal chocolates accentuated with orange. Belgian yeast was used in this Belgian Porter, along with tangerine peel, vanilla beans and chocolate malt, and it was aged on French oak chips.

I found the beer to have an exceptionally chocolaty nose and it poured an opaque, dark black with a thick, latte-colored head. The body was medium, and felt more stout-like than the typically thinner porter body-style.

I, unfortunately, did not get much in the way of citrus, but the Belgian yeast characteristics were there, if faintly. Nevertheless, this beer obviously aged well for the year it hung out in my home, and should definitely age well up until 2012.