BeerBorg

Short: It's so good!

Longer:
It pours a gorgeous red - deep, ruby red as a matter of fact. It looks like Levitation.



The aroma comes up from the glass before you get it anywhere near your nose. The nose is fruity....Mosaic, Amarillo and apparently Cascade but I don't smell it. It smells mostly of Amarillo which reminds me of Levitation.

Most of Stone's beers are hoppy for the sake of being hoppy IMO but this isn't. There is no doubt this is an IPA but it REALLY is balanced. The malt is present and tasty, not just a palette for the hops. It's rich, but not like a DIPA. Its a perfect hoppy amber, much like Levitation.

See the pattern here?

I swear that this is Levitation with the new red X Malt added. If I didn't know the bottle that this came out of I would say it's Levitation 2.0. It's dangerously tasty and easy to drink and does not come across as a 7.3% beer at all. Wow.

Luckily, I have my Levitation clone on tap now so I am going to compare them when I open the next bottle. Hmmm, maybe a video review is due.

I enjoyed this too but only had one so far. I don't remember being blown away though. Maybe it was because it was in Asheville and we had way too many awesome beers to try so I'll give this one another shot this week.
Since it's been a long while since I've had a Levitation and I've not had all that many, I never got that part but I do agree its one of their less hoppy beers and it was tasty.

Definitely going to be looking for this one, great review Ron and thanks for sharing!

Beer-lord wrote:I enjoyed this too but only had one so far. I don't remember being blown away though. Maybe it was because it was in Asheville and we had way too many awesome beers to try so I'll give this one another shot this week.
Since it's been a long while since I've had a Levitation and I've not had all that many, I never got that part but I do agree its one of their less hoppy beers and it was tasty.

You can't please everybody, right?

It is really good, but you are right - it's not as bitter as most Stone stuff so it may not register on your palette!

ScrewyBrewer wrote:Definitely going to be looking for this one, great review Ron and thanks for sharing!

I'll do a better review on the next bottle. I was pretty tired last night. The main message here is that this isn't just hops galore, you do get some rich, sweet malt flavor which makes this dangerously easy to drink.

I don't think they "added" the Red X. I think this was a single malt beer.

I am having some of this right now. It is HOLY SMOKING GOOD! I know some say Munich gives a red hue but I never thought it did. To me it is closer to a brownish amber hue. This stuff is absolutely RED! When I take a big enough swig to hit all 4 taste areas on my tongue I definitely get a malt finish along with the mild bitter finish. The malt is nothing like anything I have tasted before. I am trying to find a word to describe it other than delicious. Possibly nutty? No that's me...um...not sweet, I really don't know what to compare it to. My local home brew store guy said he can get me a sack of this for under $70. I am definitely going to buy some. I think a SMaSH with this and cascade hops would be wonderful.

I just ordered 10 lbs of x from farmhouse brewing and will come up with a recipe for spring. Prolly only need a few pounds of it so I'll do a pale then an IPA to see which I like best.
I do like this beer and it's the most un-stone beer I've had from them

Gymrat wrote:I think a SMaSH with this and cascade any hops would be wonderful.

Here, I fixed that for you

I agree, though - this is good stuff. And SOOO damn pretty.

Thanks Kealia
I love the color of this stuff.

Grabbed two of these in a mixer sixer today...

First, let me say that everything that has been said about this beer is.... True!

Secondly, there will be something red brewed shortly as I already have my RedX malt!

Mmmm, yum!

The beer finder said my local grocer had it so I went there but he said they only have it on tap. They keep ordering bottles but they don't get any. So I sat and chilled after church with a draught pint of it. Pretty good. Balanced. I may take a growler in tomorrow. Beautiful color.

I was in Safeway today and saw that this is now in the Stone mixed 12 pack, too.

Looks like a lot of us will be brewing amber-colored beers soon!

I will take a pic of this with me Levitation in a few days to compare the two.

Ok, I'm drinking some of this. And it's the best Stone beer I've had in a long time to my tastes. I would gladly drink this.

The malt to me from what I can taste over the hops, especially as it warms up, reminds me of a mix of German Vienna and German Munich, with the majority of it being Vienna. As in, it has the nice toasty/biscuit Vienna flavor, but is a good bit more malty then Vienna would be. Enough malty to balance the bitter. But not "sweet" tasting like crystal was added - Malty tasting - like Munich was added. There is a difference. So some sort of "Super Vienna" as such. This is all assuming that it's single hopped with Red-X. I don't know if it is. Would need to brew a Red-X SMaSH to know for sure.

It's as dark as the darker German Munich malts would turn out if you made a SMaSH out of it. I have not seen anyone list the diastatic power of it, but my guess is that it's closer to Vienna since they are encouraging folks to use it as 100% grain bill. You can do that with Munich but it can just barely self convert, so it's not usually encouraged. Some types of good German Munich can create a copper colored beer, but not this deep red. American stuff tends to be more amber then copper.

Probably the closest commercial IPA type beer with a similar malty vibe (but not color) I've had to this might be Victory Hop Devil. Which is brewed with imported German Vienna and Munich type malts. (it's perhaps them most malty commercial American IPA there is). Or my Munich+Simcoe or Vienna+Simcoe SMaSH beers I made in the past, not the same, but there are similarities in the malt vibe.

So this stuff is cool and I think I will get some Red-X malt to play with too. Maybe a red dubbel is in the works this summer. I think I could make a really delicious dubbel with this.

Yeah Dave,

I'm getting the Malty Vienna vibe too, but also the Munich vibe... Maybe more than the Vienna...

I'm thinking there was a grain bill of sorts and it wasn't all Red X...

The Best Malz spec sheet lists the Diastatic Power as WK, which I can only assume means weak... So probably in the realm of a medium Munich.

Tasty, very tasty...

Here's the specs...

Red X