Imperial Brown Ale

Collaborators: Drew Neldon, Brewing Supervisor, Stone Brewing Co. / Steve Via, Brewer, Stone Brewing Co.

Stone brewers Drew Neldon and Steve Via won this year’s annual in-house Stone Spotlight Series brewing competition with this hefty brown ale—an impressive result considering that one of them had never encountered a brown ale he liked before tasting this one. Given layers of flavor from Vienna, Victory and Chocolate Wheat malts, and warming, refined sweetness from Honey Malt and turbinado sugar, it’s a rich and soothing beer brewed with respect to traditional English methods and New World innovation. The British-American bulldog of the craft beer world? Perhaps. Best in Show? Absolutely.

When we tasted this beer during the judging session, several of us were impressed by how “English” this beer tasted. It reminded us of the fantastic yeast aromas one gets when walking into an historic Victorian English brewery. Now that we’ve brewed it on our big system, that yeast character shines, and so does the interesting blend of malts. The “Mutt” name comes from Drew and Steve’s attempt to combine the best of an altbier with a classic brown ale recipe. As such, the beer uses an English yeast strain but is brewed primarily with German malts: Vienna as the base malt with chocolate wheat malt and some Honey malt. The malts combine with turbinado sugar to create a pleasant molasses-tinged sweetness.