Stone 12.12.12 Vertical Epic to be a "Belgian Christmas" ale

A quad brewed with sugar plums and reindeer fur.

 

Pretty excited to try the final installment. To be honest though none have really impressed me.

 

Interesting. Seems like a good end, especially given that it will be time to vertically taste them all.

I honestly can't believe 2012 is here.
I've got at least one bottle of every year going back to '03. (Damn you '02).

In only a few short months it will be time to finally break them all open. :-)

 

Mine only go back to 07 (which was a couple years after I started getting into craft beer and one year after I turned 21 lol). I wish I had known about them sooner. I didn't even know beer could be aged until I saw this VE, which was the first I ever noticed. I wish I could try any of the past ones with my vertical, but 07-12 isn't too bad.

I haven't been really blown away by many. I thought the Hatch chile flavor in the 11 was really intriguing. And I hated the 10 when it first came out but I opened some recently (I had 6 of these cellared and only 2 of the others because no one liked it) and they have gotten MUCH better IMO. I can't wait for December. It'll definitely be a Merry Xmas for me.

 

Nothing wrong with that, it's still a good chunk. Personally I'm just kicking myself because I actually remember seeing the '02 on the shelf and skipped past it. :-(

Here's the last time I broke 'em all for a pic back in 2009. All nicely lined up from '03-'09. (All back in storage now). ;-)



I think '03 is still my favorite, although the '05 and '06 were nice too. Big bold dark and Belgian-ish

'04 was the weakest imo. Wasn't crazy about light body and kafir lime flavor. I'd be surprised if it holds up well.

Oh well.... a few more months and we'll see.

 

I sure hope the 12.12.12 is better than 4 Calling Birds...

In any case, I'll definitely be having an end of the world tasting soon after this comes out.

 

I remember liking 4 Calling Birds. I hope this is similar to Mikkeller's Santa's Little helper 2011 that I had last year. If I remember right I loved it.

 

My fave has been the 09, I found a few bottles still on a shelf back in May and bought them all.

 

I enjoyed 4 Calling Birds besides being a gusher... looking forward to trying this.

 

Hopefully they didn't have them sitting out in fluorescent lights that whole time. Sad story I had a DFH Fort that had sat on a shelf for a year and it was all fuckered up.

 

I was hoping it would be a witbier or a super high abv beer...you know, for the irony.

 

Had 09.09.09 in 09 and my rookie palate was unimpressed. Had it on-tap a month ago and it blew my mind!!! I wish I had bought at least one to cellar

 

Im torn on which tasting to have first, VE or 12 beers of the Apocalypse

 

I'll help. Send me your 12 beers of the Apocalypse and that'll leave only VE

 

can't be any worse than 11-11-11

 

Fort stored correctly is all fuckered up.

 

Started to cellar/hoard a few years back, and the VE series were the first beers I planned to cellar long term, and the cellar has since expanded well beyond the series (dam you stone! haha) Having already had a few other verticals (of other beers) over the years, my expectation for the series as a whole has dimished, but who knows. It has part of the fun really, to see what works, and what doesnt.

Since this is the longest vertical (though not a true vertical) that I have personally cellared, will still be fun though. Also got two of the VE glasses as a gift a while back, so will be pulling those out for photo's etc. Mainly looking forward to opening up some space in the cellar after these are gone, lol.

The 12/12/12 sounds interesting though.

 

11.11.11 was better than 10.10.10

Although I will say (as I said before) the 10.10.10 got better with age, so who knows.

These are both true for me too. VE started my addiction. Now I too am a hoarder. And if I made more money I'd really be a hoarder, like all those assholes who take all the good stuff before I can buy even one because all of Tucson AZ only gets 3 cases and one jackass buys it all.

 

Yeah tell me about it I was not able to buy any of the Anniversary Ruination IPA. At least the 16th Anniversary IPA was in bigger supply.