The color is a deep red when held directly in front of light. By just looking at it, it is amber in color with red hints in tone and a nice khaki head. The head diminishes somewhat quickly; as it does so, however, it leaves a nice retention around the glass. It smells so amazingly delicious as well. As is almost expected with Stone, lots of hoppiness on the nose along with some citrus notes. I was also struck by the vanilla that comes off the nose as well, but mostly it smells of Stone's favorite ingredients: hops. Time to taste...
Again, having had all three "Bastard" ales, this one is similar but not too similar. It tastes amazing. I get the oak almost immediately, which gives way to the citrus notes. It then gets sweet as it hits the back of the tongue with flavors such as toffee, caramel, and vanilla. Then the finish is just what I expect from Stone beers. The finish is a nice, bitter, dry, hoppy finish that leaves you desiring another sip of this brew without much delay. So good. So damn good. I do not think there has been one Stone beer that I have not liked. Some are better than others, obviously in my opinion, but this one is definitely up there. This bad boy ranks in at 8.5% ABV and is definitely a wonderful testament to the "Bastard" series. As it says on the bottle: "A slef trbitue to 13 yaers of arorgnace." I am sure that is easily translatable to all (Stone's gimmick with this beer is that they are going off of that logic that the human brain can interpret and understand what a word is as long as the first and last letter are in the right place, while all the other letters are mixed up).
This is an amazing beer, and definitely worth buying a couple more of to experiment aging with. Will it age? The Double Bastard ages well with the rest of 'em, and Dogfish Head's Burton Baton ages well also! I'm going to experiment and try it out. Let's do this. There is no way of knowing until I pop it open in 2012.
