Re-Post: STONE BREWING CO Barrel Aged Series

Written by Jacob Mckean

They are the great white buffaloes of Stone’s line-up. Like a cross between a unicorn and a siren, they appear enticingly for the briefest instance, only to disappear in a flurry of whispers.

They are Stone’s barrel-aged beers and special treatments. Stone Imperial Russian Stout Aged in Bourbon Barrels. Double Dry-Hopped Stone Ruination IPA. Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine Aged in Red Wine Barrels. And many more.

A veritable sea of barrels taking up precious space in our brewery

Now, we are utterly thrilled to be announcing that some of these sudsy jackalopes will be available in quite debonair (if-we-do-say-so-ourselves) 500ml corked-and-caged bottles.

Here’s the rub: There will be very few of these bottles available, and irregularly at that. At least for the foreseeable future. Space is our biggest constraint, and filling up our brewery with barrels just isn’t an option. So if you can’t get these, we’re sorry, we really are. We’ll try to make more, and if you can make it to one of our events, there’s a chance you’ll get to try them on draft. But that’s the best we can do…for now.

Yeah, we've tasted these, and they're damn good

Without further ado, our first “Quingenti Millilitre” release will be…Ken Schmidt / Maui / Stone Kona Coffee Macadamia Coconut Porter Aged in Bourbon Barrels. Yeah, that’s right. We’re releasing that. All 672 bottle of it. Tentative release date: sometime in July.

Stay tuned for release details, but this will be a brewery-only release due to the very small quantity. If you need an excuse to visit America’s Finest City and come to our gorgeous Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens, here’s an excuse. You’re welcome.

This. In bottles. Probably in July.

To keep the Quingenti Millilitre releases flowing, we’ve brought in a whole lot of new barrels, which are temporarily stacked in our cellar. Namely, we recently acquired 346 Scotch whisky barrels—some of which we’ve already filled—along with a handful of new wine barrels and bourbon barrels.

So expect to see the results of these delicious experiments released in bottles over the coming years. In fact, a small amount of 2011 Stone Imperial Russian Stout & 2011 Stone BELGO Anise Imperial Russian Stout—which will be released May 31^st—is already resting gently in a variety of barrels.

But that’s not all, folks! We may well release Quingenti Millilitre bottles of our double dry-hopped beers or other unique treatments we dream up. So keep your barrel-aged ‘beerdar’ on. We’ll send updates here and on our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Oh, and what the hell does Quingenti Millilitre mean (well, besides denoting something tasty)? It means quite simply “500ml,” which is the size of the special bottles.  And it’s the name we’ve given to the series (“Brewmaster’s Series” or “Brewer’s Special Reserve” and all that just sounded too cheesy).