Stone XI

Wooa. This is a good beer. Pours dark like a porter but drinks like a double IPA. It is very mellow, if you can apply that adjective to a DIPA. The head was average sized and had the color of a porter or stout. The beer left no lace on the glass. There is a faint, roasted taste that emerges as you work your way down the glass, but it stays faint even as the beer warmed allowing it to keep its DIPA structure. It did not have the stick-to-your-mouth high alcohol taste like some DIPAs and last year's Stone Anniversary Ale (which also was a DIPA). In all a most enjoyable beer and a tribute to Stone's craftsmanship.

I am going to pick up a couple more as they will go well with the cooler weather. I bought mine this morning at South Bay Drugs in Imperial Beach, a great beer store in the most unlikely place - a beat up strip shopping center a stone's throw from the Mexican border. I picked up a couple of other beers in addition to Stone XI that I hope to write about later.