I’m sitting here watching “30 Days of Night: Dark Days”, a direct to DVD sequel to a movie that no one liked, except me maybe. It’s not very good. Luckily though I am distracted by this mighty good beer. Let’s talk about that shell we! I can’t imagine you want to hear about the movie.
Like their other beers Stone Brewing goes to great length to explain their brew, seriously the back of the 22 oz bottle has a small book on it. It’s impressive but I have to admit I didn’t read it. But I got a rough idea from scrolling over it, the brew is combo west coast IPA and straight up Belgian delight. Get where the name Cali-Belgigue comes from now? See we all learned something.
It seems like a simple enough idea. Take your standard IPA and throw in some Belgian yeast but I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of beers like this. Of course it should also be noted that Stone’s “standard” IPA is pretty awesome on its own so they’ve got a head start. The aroma was a little surprising to me but it probably shouldn’t of been. A big ass amount of hops popped up off the bottle before I even started to pour. When I shove my nose right up in the glass though you do get a nice hint of yeast, so it’s there. But hops are the front runner.
The flavor is such a great balance of citrus from the hops and clove/banana from the yeast that I almost think they found way to marry them in a court of law. It’s good, very good even. There I said it. Little bit of a warm feeling going down which was kind of surprising for only being about 7% ABV but then again what the hell do I know.
So in short this beer is a lot better this crappy horror movie I’m watching right now. But I have to say after finishing off a bottle of this I’m liking the rubber teeth vampires a lot more then I did when I first cracked it open. So there’s that. Beer makes everything better.
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