Enjoy By 2/14/15 - something seriously wrong

I had it in a bottle yesterday, smelled like wet dog sadly. Last batch was awesome.

 

He did?

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/hops-in-enjoy-by-12-26-14.240337/#post-3091658

 

Could not agree with you more. I felt like 2/14 was terrible.

 

I'd definitely let Nugget Market know about the issue as well as Stone. No issues/complaints here with my supply.

 

I will quit BeerAdvocate when there is finally a Stone Enjoy By release that isn't accompanied by the inevitable thread debating how it compares to other batches of the identical recipe beer.

Yes, hops can vary from crop to crop. But it seems to me that a beer with close to a dozen hop varieties is going to be far less susceptible to a perceivable change in flavor and aroma because there is so much more interaction going on, whereas a beer with one or two hop varieties is much more "exposed", as it were. Instead of getting 100% of the aroma and flavor from one hop variety (or 50/50 or 60/40, etc.), Enjoy By gets a fraction of it's overall aroma and flavor from each of 11 different hop varieties.

Wouldn't a beer (like one that uses a single hop variety) that gets 100% of it's aroma and flavor from a single source be more susceptible to changes than a beer that gets its aroma and flavor from a melange of hop varieties? And yet we don't get the bi-monthly thread about how Zombie Dust just isn't the same this batch as the last batch, or how Batch [insert number] of PseudoSue was the best batch ever.

I've always held the opinion that, while subtle changes in aroma and flavor may manifest from changes from crop to crop of hops based on how wet/dry the growing season was, when the hops were harvested, etc, the changes in the subjective experience of the drinker's palate and mood are far more likely to be the culprit of any obvious changes in perceived aroma and flavor.

But ultimately, it's a question to which we'll never find a definitive answer, because it is all but impossible to normalize for the changes in an individual's perception over the period of time that would need to pass to compare different batches of beer brewed with different crops of hops. It's made all the more difficult by the fact that hop characteristics degrade so quickly with time.

 

It was the latest beersmith podcast..

 

yea in the past, not sure how long ago it was..

 

Thanks for that pointer. Mitch Steele does indeed discuss how the hopping has changed in the brewing of Enjoy By. The discussion starts at around 17:30 of the podcast.

The changes were to the hops used for dry hopping. Since dry hopping is the dominant contributor to hop aroma (and consequently to the beer's flavor profile) these changes are not insignificant.

It is funny/ironic that Mitch Steele actually used the words "not a secret" when discussing these changes. Well it was a secret to me (and maybe a secret to Greg Koch?).

Cheers!

 

Eek- I omitted a word, but hope the intent came across anyway. It should have been:
"I don't know about anyone else, but I'm certainly not suggesting wholesale changes. "

 

Last years 2-14 and this years 2-14 have been both my favorite enhoy by's

 

“I will quit BeerAdvocate when there is finally a Stone Enjoy By release that isn't accompanied by the inevitable thread debating how it compares to other batches of the identical recipe beer.”

If you listen to the Beersmith podcast with Mitch Steele you will learn that the Stone Enjoy By recipe is not “identical” throughout the brewing of these beers.

Cheers!

 

I had one and thought it was amazing.

 

I had a bottle yesterday. Very piney and very smooth.

 

I found this one to be as delicious as ever.

 

I listened to it, and a couple things stood out to me. For starters, Mitch said nothing that contradicted Greg's statement on these forums a few months ago that the recipe hadn't been tweaked since September 2013. In fact, he states on the podcast that "we haven't changed it in over a year", which not only directly supports Greg's comment, but underscores my point about how the most likely culprit for varied aroma/taste perception from batch to batch is with the drinker, and not the drink. Most (all?) of the comments on this thread involve comparisons to batches that were brewed in 2014. None of those changes in perception can be traced back to a recipe change. Now if someone wants to talk about how Enjoy By 10-25-13 was different from previous batches, they would have the evidence of a recipe change on their side.

But even with that, there is a caveat; another statement of interest on the podcast speaks a little bit to the recipe change itself:

Given the context he provides about certain hops (in this case, Nelson Sauvin) being difficult to get, this comment seems to indicate that the recipe was changed with the express interest in *avoiding* any significant alteration in the way the beer smelled and tasted. It also seems to support the idea that beers with more hop varieties are more capable of weathering adjustments in the choice of hops without an impact on aroma/flavor.

All that said, I'll admit my use of the term "identical" was done for effect, rather than as a statement of literal fact. It's a bad habit I sometimes have. For all intents and purposes, the recipe has not changed, and even when it did change, it was done in a way to minimize changes in the end product.

 

Glad to hear the issue isn't systemic, as I have a couple waiting for this weekend.

Definitely sounds like an infection of some sort. Hopefully isolated as much as possible.

 

I had 2 bottles last week and loved it. Thought it was a great rebound after the disappointing 12/26. Sorry to hear you got some bad bottles.

 

I will do my best to remember that the next time I see a post you make with the word “identical” in it.

Cheers!

 

Greg and I have both been saying the same thing. Early on in this beer's life (pre-2013) we had to make some subtle hopping changes because the Stone Enjoy By IPA became much more popular than we had anticipated, and we couldn't get enough of some of the hop varieties we were using. The recipe hasn't changed since 2013. We have been pretty open about this to people who have asked. Regarding the complaint beer, please contact Stone directly via email (address on website) and we'll see if we can figure out what happened. This is the first complaint on this batch I have seen.

 

My lady agreed with me, with previous batches it was weed upfront, but in this one it felt light at first, with the weed in the finish. Definitely less piney, more Pliny than before.