Brian Cendrowski

Stone Old Guardian Vertical Tasting

Greg Koch, miracle worker. He can turn grain into beer and levitate.

This is a special week for craft beer in South Carolina. Greg Koch from Stone Brewing Company left his refuge in Southern California to come out to abnormally chilly South Carolina for a whirlwind tour, culminating with the Brewvival Festival in Charleston on Saturday.

We don’t often have nationally known brewers and beer folk passing through our state, so for us it’s a very special opportunity to meet one of the most influential people in the industry.

Greg’s first stop was on Tuesday night for a meet and greet at Barley’s Tap Room in Greenville, SC. He brought with him some special treats: three vintages of Old Guardian Barleywine, 2007, 2009 and the recently released 2010.

Vertical tastings are fascinating. I love being able to experience how a particular beer changes and matures, all in one flight. The Old Guardian was perfect for a demonstration of this process. It was apparent that each vintage had it’s own character.

So let’s get vertical!

Old Guardian 2007

I started with the elder statesman of the flight. Knowing Stone’s propensity for hops, I didn’t want risk destroying my palate on the fresher vintages.

The color in the photo to the right comes across pretty accurately. It was a bright amber.

I did not notice much in the way of hops in the aroma. The aroma was sweet with malt and candy sugar.

The flavor was intensely sweet and malty as you’d expect from a barleywine. To me it came across as a melange of candied sugar and dried fruit. Not much in the way of hops in the front end. The malt is the star here. It did have a moderately bitter hop finish.

I thought it was smooth and had a comforting alcohol warming to it. It was a pleasant and delicious beer to drink.

Old Guardian 2009

Stepping forward a couple years, I knew the intensity was about to get ratcheted up a few notches. I strapped myself in and prepared for Round 2.

The color of the ’09 was nearly identical to the ’07, a vibrant amber. The difference I noticed right off the bat was the presence of hop aroma, which was absent from the ’07.

The hop character was also present at the beginning of the flavor. It was a big, yet well-balanced mix of citrus hops and malt sweetness. Very full-bodied. As with the ’07, it finished with a moderate amount of bitterness that lingered on the tongue.

Old Guardian 2010

The newest addition to the family, the ’10 comes out swinging like a younger brother who is tired of being picked on by his older siblings. One word is needed for the ’10: hops.

Hops in the aroma, assertive hop flavor throughout, finishing bitter. The malt backbone was not as gripping in the ’10 as the previous years. The ’10 was also a good bit darker than than its predecessors.

Turns out, Stone made some significant changes to the recipe in 2010 which affected the color and malt profile. So, the 2010 Old Guardian is not a true “control,” holding all things constant except age, but it is similar enough to the previous vintages that you can still get the point.

Left to right: Old Guardian 2010, 2009 and 2007

The ’10 tasted fresher and much more assertive than the older beers. It was certainly good, but you likely need to be a hophead to get maximum enjoyment out of this vintage.

In Summary

My favorite of the three vintages was the 2009. After a year, I feel like the Old Guardian really hits its stride. It still has hop character in the aroma and flavor, but it’s also had time to develop that amazing and complex malt backbone. It’s wonderfully balanced and gives you the full spectrum of what beer can offer.

The 2007 was a close second. Smooth and delicious. I just wanted to sit in a big leather chair and smoke a cigar with this beer in hand.

If you do buy some of the new 2010 at the store, it’s still a great beer if you want to drink it now. However, if you have a cool, dark place to store some bottles, you’ll be well rewarded if you stash this bad boy away for a year.

Ask Mr. Science: Why does hop character leave beer over time?

I thought I would add a quick little Mr. Science lesson for those that may be wondering why the hop character of the 2007 Old Guardian was so different from the newer vintages. Did they use less hops or what?

Hops lends its character to beer from oils and alpha acid that are contained in tiny resinous globes in the hop cones. These oils have different levels of volatility (meaning how quickly they dissolve and evaporate), so they lend different traits depending on when they are added during the brewing process.http://briancendrowski.hoppress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=357

The oil that contributes to the aroma is very volatile, so it evaporates quickly. That’s why aroma hops are added at the very end of the brewing boil, or even after fermentation is complete (a process called dry hopping).

The flavor oils lend the citrus, spicy or earthy hop flavor and are a little less volatile, so they are typically added with anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes left in the boil.

Finally, you get the bittering component. The bitterness comes from alpha acid, and it contributes the bitter finish and pucker at the tail end of a swallow. Those acids are not very soluble in water, so it requires a long boil to rearrange the acid molecules get them to dissolve in the beer. They are added earliest in the boil, usually with 60 to 90 minutes remaining.

That is the same reason why, over time, the hop character begins to dissipate from aged beer. The aroma is the first to go, followed by the flavoring hops. Hop bitterness can stick around for a long time, as the 2007 Old Guardian proved.

That’s why, as a rule of thumb, it’s best to enjoy most beer when it is fresh, especially hoppy beers. Barleywines, Imperial Stouts and some Belgian styles make good candidates for aging because they draw most of their richness from developing a complex malt backbone and don’t usually rely as heavily on hops.

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