As I am
sure many of you are aware, an IPA is best when fresh, with the hop character
fading quickly in some and at a slower rate in others. Stone
Brewing is a big proponent of drinking their beers as fresh as possible,
most notably with their Enjoy By series, which is great if you have ready
access to Stone beers and can pick up a bottle shortly after its release. Up here in Wisconsin that isn't an option,
and hasn't been for a few years.
Personally, I get my Stone beers from Colorado when family comes out to
visit or on a rare trip down to Illinois where Stone is still readily
available. The 17th Anniversary
Götterdämmerung IPA is one of the former.
Sure, it came out on August 14, 2013 but I didn't have a bottle in hand
until mid-December. Heck, I almost
didn't grab my notebook to take notes on 17th Anniversary because I
was convinced that there wouldn't be much life left to this beer. Then I remembered a speech Mitch Steele gave
at the Home Brewers Conference last year, mentioning that many of the newer
Stone beers were holding their intended flavor far longer than expected, so I
grabbed my book, popped open the beer and prepared to take notes on it so that
I could compose a post for all you nice folks who take an interest in my
opinions. On to the review!
On Beeradvocate,
17th Anniversary has a score of 88, with the bros giving it a
90. At ratebeer, it has a score of 98 overall with
a 92 for style.
They Say:
Our
latest anniversary beer, starring an all-German cast of malt and hops, is yet
one more glorious example of a Stone IPA brewed outside the box. Our brewers
have brought their experiments with German hops to fruition, leaving convention
behind to create this hefty IPA entirely with pilsner malts. These provide a
superbly crisp mouthfeel, while a unique mix of noble and new-school hop
varieties adds layers of bright, bitter flavors. Despite the daunting name,
this beer isn't designed to bring about the end of the world, but it just might
destroy some of your preconceived notions of what an IPA can be.
Brewmaster Mitch Steele’s Tasting Notes
Appearance - Pours deep gold and brilliantly crystal clear with an
off-white colored head of foam.
Aroma - Focused on hoppy, with herbal and stone fruit hop
aromatics.
Taste - European hops-herbal, floral, spicy, peppery and
resiny, balanced by very clean, intensely bitter, beautiful subtle malt
flavors, and just a hint of alcohol.
Palate - Crisp and bitter. A very refreshing beer; well suited for
the summer!
Overall - A very fun beer for us to brew. Through a series of
intense dry-hopping trials that we have been running over the past couple of
years, we found several newer German hop varieties that we thought were unique
and different from the citrusy American hops and fruity New Zealand hops that
we have been using so much of this year. An interesting twist on a Double IPA
(a German IPA, perhaps?), brewed with malts and hops traditionally used to brew
German lagers and European pilsners. Some of the hops we included in this
recipe include Strisselspalt, which has long been one of my favorite noble
hops, with a delicate floral character and hints of citrus; Sterling, a US-bred
hop with Saaz heritage, and is a hop we haven't used much before, but we just
love the intense resiny and spicy pure hop flavor; Herkules, a newer high-alpha
German hop variety with intense stone fruit and tropical fruit characteristics;
and Hersbrucker, a classic German aroma hop with intense floral and stone fruit
flavors.
Suggested Pairings by "Dr." Bill Sysak
Appetizers - Honey-ginger chicken
skewers, crab cakes, grilled peaches with blue cheese, Marcona almonds
Salads - Citrus with goat cheese,
summer fruit, Thai seafood, Waldorf
Main Courses - Rotisserie chicken,
Cajun shrimp and grits, tofu stir fry, cedar plank salmon
Desserts - Peach cobbler, carrot
cake, rhubarb pie, lemon squares
Cheeses - Grana Padrano, Fiscalini
Bandage Wrapped Cheddar, Green Mountain Blue Cheese, Point Reyes Blue
Cigars - Drew Estate Herrera
Esteli, Montecristo Platinum Churchill, My Father Flor de las Antillas Toro, Illusione
Epernay Le Martin
Youtube Video:
I Say:
Stone 17th Anniversary
Götterdämmerung IPA pours a hazy golden amber with a thick, creamy, white head
that holds excellent retention and leaves a moderate amount of lacing behind in
the glass. The aroma is surprisingly
strong and complex with a strong up front floral and almost peach-like hop
aroma backed up with a subtle spiciness and a hint of herbal hops throughout. The soft pilsner malts definitely come forward
in the aroma, although there is no doubt that this is a west coast hopped IPA,
regardless of the malt and hop combination used. The strong hoppy aromas seem like they will
lead to a strong hop bitterness, even though the two aren’t necessarily correspondent.
The
flavor has a considerable floral flavor up front that intermingles with clean,
subtle pilsner malts throughout. A
slightly spicy, almost noble hop character is barely perceptible midway through
the experience, although that could be my expectations fooling my perceptions
than the other way around. The floral
hops are definitely the more dominant aspect of the experience, with the high
hopping rates translating into a moderately high hop bitterness that is more
than adequately balanced by a moderate malt presence. There is no denying though, that this is
distinctly a west coast hopped IPA. It
has all the qualities that I have come to expect out of a solid Stone west
coast IPA, even having the lingering bitter hop finish that I have come to
love. Götterdämmerung IPA is medium
bodied with a moderate level of carbonation.
This is not a beer to be sipped lightly, it might even be a beer that
the weaker among you are not worthy of receiving
I went
into this beer expecting most of the hop flavor to have faded, and maybe it
did, but I still got an awesome German hopped West Coast-style IPA out of the
17th Anniversary Götterdämmerung IPA almost SIX months after
the release! This is an amazing beer,
and if it still had this amazing hop presence this long after the release, I
wish I would have tried it fresh! This
is definitely a beer that you should pick up if you find it. Don’t worry that it is well past the release
date, pick up a bottle and enjoy it. I
wish more hoppy beers still had this hop character after 6 months in the
bottle!
Stone 17th
Anniversary Götterdämmerung IPA is an amazing beer! I wholeheartedly support this experimental
beer put forward by Stone Brewing Co, it throws the traditional styles to the
winds with the same arrogant attitude we have all come to expect from Stone
Brewing. I look forward to more
experimental Imperial IPAs from Stone in the future, and only wish that they
were still available in Wisconsin.
That’s
all for this week, check back soon for another review!
Happy
Drinking!