Sam Smith Stingo

The beer *should* age well, but I don't know from direct experience. The only one I've had was less than a year old and it was very good. However, if you don't know *how* the beer was aged, for instance, if it was exposed to too much light and or temperature variations, especially too warm, then it won't age well. So whenever you buy an older beer from a store, you always run that risk.

 

i wouldn't age it, since it's pasteurized. that said, 2 years (especially if it was refrigerated) isn't that old.

IMO the thing with stingo is that it should be GREAT but it's just pretty good. depending on your path to beer geekness (largely time period, but also just incidental facts), you may have come to sam smith as a premium gateway or a weird overrated "mass produced fail english brewer" (the latter reputation appears common among newer beer snobs/geeks who, to borrow a phrase, Can Taste The Rare***). if you couldn't tell from the last sentence, i came to sam smith as a premium gateway.

and i still think sam smith can be pretty great. fresh "pure-brewed lager" is grassy, refreshing, and delicious. oatmeal stout is top notch.

given the skill that you know is there (and the beer/brewing description, and the price), you want stingo to be competitive with barrel aged strong ales of the american craft beer boom. the disappointing fact is that it simply isn't.

*** edit: sidenote, a lot of english BAs have a bit of a stick up their asses about sam smith, and i fully get why: they see americans holding sam smith on this Ultimate British Beer pedestal, which to their ear sounds like someone in belgium raving constantly about how rogue is the best brewery in the world; apparently there's scores of better english breweries. notice, the same type of criticism doesn't come up for j.w. lees harvest ale, b/c anyone with any taste knows it's fantastic (assuming they like barleywines in the first place).

 

Ya, I was surprised to find this at a local place and that it was $17. After a few weeks of saving I picked some up, had wanted this and Samuel Smith is one of my favorite breweries. Thought I would get more barrel complexity from this one. Still a good beer but not a $17 good beer, IMO.

 

Is it possible that 12/11 meant it was brewed in November of last year? Ya know, because Europeans usually write dates differently than we do??

 

Samuel Smith puts the brew date on the bottle then Stingo sets in the barrel for a year and releases it. So the 12/11 bottle was released 12/12.

 

JW Lees Harvest Ale also costs quite a bit more than Samuel Smith. Samuel Smith makes some of the best tasting English beers that are suitable for regular consumption and widely available in the US. With the way a lot of English BAs criticize Sam Smith and the American beer drinkers who love Sam Smith, it's as if they don't realize that the small batch cask mild ale they drank the other day isn't available in the US.

 

PaulyB83 got it right as far as the brewed date and the release date are a year apart. It is an aged release, when it is new. I actually have not had the batch that the OP is talking about, but I have had more than the average person's share of drinking Stingo (still have one bottle left of the original batch). This release is nothing short of amazing, if you are inclined to like this style and not setting expectations of it being something that it is not, based solely on the fact that it is barrel aged, there is nothing to complain about in a regularly handled bottle of Stingo.

If you are coming at this beer after maybe thinking that beers like Dark Lord are supposed to be good barrel aged beers, then I would say that Stingo simply isn't stylistically your type of beer. But if you are questioning if this may be past it's prime at such a young age for this beer, then I would have to presume that you are picking out flaws in the beer, which to me sounds more like you had a bad bottle. Could be from a case left in the sun and/or a hot truck at some point on its journey to your table top. There is nothing about this beer that would be producing anything to be interpreted as going south (even in the oldest batches), unless some outside factor caused it to happen.

 

Not really responding to OPs question (though i suppose it can age), but does anyone remember Whitney version from the 70s?

 

I think that you mean Watney's. They brewed one on and off for about twenty years, from the mid 60's to mid eighties (all to the best of my understanding, as I never had the pleasure). The only Watney's that I remember seeing around was the red barrel and the cream stout, the latter of which was regularly in my fridge.

Not sure if anybody before Watney's marketed using the term "stingo" before that, but it appears to be a slang term that was used to refer to a strong (old) ale. For anybody not already aware, Boulevard and Pretty Things collaborated on a stingo, as well. I have a couple of those aging now. I also just looked it up under beer names on here and I see that Great Waters seems to have had one on tap around 2006, but the reviews lead me to believe that this wasn't anything close to an old ale.

 

stingo in that context just means old ale i think (which itself more or less means scotch ale, or barleywine). the collab may even be a reference (direct or oblique) to yorkshire stingo.

either way, the long and short of it is that you liked one, didn't like the other that much. it's a shame that sam smith stingo isn't better than it is, but what are you gonna do?

 

Something is amiss here.

 

ehhhh, just saying that stingo shouldn't be aged due to pasteurization doesn't mean i think j.w. lees can't be fantastic (pasteurized or otherwise).

that said, let me muddy the waters by saying that i've finally come to the conclusion that j.w. lees is best young; maybe 2~3 years at most. blasphemy i know, and 10yr+ j.w. lees is amazing, but it's a better balanced, bigger package beer young, honestly.

thaaaaaat said, i think you may be right that pasteurizing beer meaning that aging won't do anything = dumb myth. oxidation is the prime mover of aging, not residual yeast activity. so, you got me.

 

The Boulevard/PT Stingo was my first foray into the style, and I loved it. I've netted four through trades and have one left that I can't keep myself from trying to open. Having had that, then trying the Yorkshire, I'll admit it wasn't the same greatness, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I think the take on the style from Boulevard was a little different, creating something more unique, but I can't down the Yorkshire for not being as similar. It was still really good, and we just got a 2012 case in this weekend so I plan to stash a few and revisit it soon. Sounds very possible your bottle had an issue somewhere in it's life. I'd source another from somewhere else and give it another shot.

 

Here's a bit more insight from the Pretty Things website:

http://www.prettythingsbeertoday.com/wp/2012/a-story-of-stingo-and-collaboration-with-boulevard/

And here's my blog on the collaboration process:

http://www.boulevard.com/collaboration-no-3/

 

Yeah d*mn spellcheck crazy options those days, BMC, Heine or that Stingo everyone was afraid of. Friggin awesome, like drinking Guiness with a shot of bourbon!

 

Its a good beer but really overpriced. Cheapest I've seen it was $10.99.