Commentist Beer Barrel: Bastards

Happy Holidays, you bastards. This review has been a long time in the making. Since Thanksgiving or so, with lady snow’s help, I’ve been diligently tasting every beer I could get my hands on from Stone’s Arrogant Bastard line. Today I’m ready to share my findings, but as usual, I’ve got some things to say first.

I’m not terribly ashamed to admit that I have long admired Greg Koch, the CEO of, and co-founder of, and rockstar-good-looking ambassador for Stone Brewing of Escondido, California. I met him once. He signed a Stone Ruination IPA-branded mug that I’ve never drunk another beer from and that I display prominently on a dining-area shelf to this day. A close friend of mine can testify to the way I fanboyed over meeting him, though I hope she’s never called to. He was cool, he was friendly, he gave the best answer he could to my question about when the hell we would get Stone Imperial Russian Stout in Texas. I don’t remember what that answer was, but we did get it, eventually.

Stone Brewing’s infamous Arrogant Bastard was a revelation to me, back in 2008, and I was not at that point naive about the flavors that can be produced in a beer. I’d been awakened, in various stages, to the possibilities that the world of brewing held by Chimay Grande Reserve, by Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, by Abita Turbodog, by (and don’t groan too loudly here) Allagash White. My experience wasn’t deep, but it was at least broad.

Arrogant Bastard was different from anything I’d experienced beforehand. Arrogant Bastard explicitly promised an uncomfortable experience, and then delivered. I loved it. And my experience was complemented by the back-label text that began:

Arrogant Bastard Ale: This is an aggressive ale.  You probably won’t like it.  It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth.  We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory, maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal.

I was hooked. I’d never been told that I was special for appreciating any particular beer. I’d never seen a small brewery so aggressively attack the Budweiser-Miller-Coors beer-industrial complex — a collection of corporations I’d hated since long before I knew beer could be good. It’s a little embarrassing to recount all of that now, because what read as genuine and well-earned bravado back then has started to feel more like a gimmick they fed and fed until it took on a life of its own and started giving beers names like “Sorry Not Sorry IPA.” (To be fair, that one’s sitting in my fridge right now.) Maybe I’m just being a crank, but when you finally get around to putting a barrel-aged edition of Arrogant Bastard into bottles in the year of Our Lord 2015, reading the label and finding out I’m still “not worthy” is a touch eyeroll-inducing.

I know Greg Koch and Stone Brewing truly don’t care what I think about their marketing or their image or the authenticity thereof. They wouldn’t care even if not needing to be liked wasn’t part of their identity, because they and I both know that I’m not drinking marketing; I’m drinking beer, and Stone’s brews are some of the very finest in that particular category of liquids. Enough talk: Let’s drink some of them!

ARROGANT BASTARD

The original Arrogant Bastard is a blunt instrument, a with a caramel-like malt base that exists mostly as a superstructure built to support as much hop bitterness as possible. Truthfully, I was a bit surprised to find that, after years of bombarding my tongue with brews with names like Ruination and Palate Wrecker and Hop Wallop, this still stands out to me as the same uncommonly, almost-but-not-quite-unpleasantly bitter beer that it was when I drank my first bomber, but it does! It’s resinous and toasty and it faintly stings the tongue. It is, as advertised, an aggressive beer.

lady snow says: That’s really hoppy. You can really feel the bitterness on the sides of your tongue. It’s not quite as bitter as when I was a kid and ate baking chocolate thinking it would taste just like regular chocolate, but it’s almost as bitter. That was a bitter experience for me both literally and figuratively.

OAKED ARROGANT BASTARD

This is Arrogant Bastard aged on oak chips, and I gotta tell you, guys, the influence of the oak is pretty minimal. The summary immediately above would make a credible description of this beer as well, with just the barest suggestion of wood and vanilla. I think most beer fans would have to know this was oak-aged to notice it. I’m positive that I would have to know this was oak-aged to notice it. It does come through a little more as the beer warms, though.

lady snow says: I could taste the hops blooming on my tongue. I know that sounds kind of frilly, but that was honestly my immediate reaction.

DOUBLE BASTARD

Okay, now we’re getting into the heavy hitters. Double Bastard is, for all intents and purposes, a barleywine, though I don’t believe Stone ever calls it that. It’s a hoppy one, but in being scaled up to a formidable 11% ABV, I think it’s lost the abrasive edge of the original beer. That’s not unexpected—”doubling” a recipe almost always means adding a lot more malt than hops, after all—and it’s not bad either! This beer really plays up those caramel malt flavors,

lady snow says: I just realized I drank it all.

make it snow: Good start.

lady snow: It’s like walking through a field of hops while you’re eating… what is it? Something that’s a little bit sweet. Like a really good bread pudding.

DEPTH CHARGED DOUBLE BASTARD

It’s a simple enough conceit: Double Bastard, but with coffee. This isn’t Stone’s first foray into the combination of coffee and hops, either. I live in perpetual hope that I’ll someday see the return of their excellent Dayman Coffee IPA. But, okay, this will do for now. Coffee and hops are, I don’t have to tell you, both bitter flavors, and in this beer it’s almost impossible to tell where the hops end and the coffee begins, or even whether it happens the other way around.

lady snow says: It’s like hoppy coffee. That’s what they should have called this one. Hoppy Coffee Double Bastard.

make it snow says: It’s really not complicated, is it? As a rule, these beers aren’t really complicated.

lady snow says: It’s not. But complicated doesn’t always mean good. This is simple but good. It’s like a Beatles song.

BOURBON BARREL AGED ARROGANT BASTARD

It’s a testimony either to the sheer viciousness of Arrogant Bastard’s hop profile or to Greg Koch’s directorial vision for the Bastard line that even the bourbon barreled Arrogant Bastard tastes overwhelmingly of regular-ass Arrogant Bastard. I’ll be honest: I expected more. The sweet, wood-derived flavors are more prevalent here than in Oak Aged Bastard, but not by a whole hell of a lot.

lady snow says: I can’t really even tell that it’s barrel-aged.

make it snow: Well, that about settles it. Back to the barrel with you!

SOUTHERN CHARRED

This, though… this is a real twist. The bitterness is still intense at first blush, but it gives way very quickly to sweet vanilla, graham cracker, caramel, and just outright whiskey. Yep, this is Double Bastard aged in bourbon barrels for a number of months not specified on the label—I’ll hazard a guess, and that guess is eight—and the oak makes all the difference on this one. For all the sweetness, though, this never really gets close to being cloying, with a dry finish that’s both surprising and welcome.

lady snow says: I need to try the regular Barrel Aged Arrogant Bastard as a point of reference.

make it snow says: Okay, guys, so: I tried to taste these in a very specific order. The problem, and this was all my fault, is that I drank a bottle of Barrel Aged Arrogant Bastard on my own ahead of schedule and figured I might as well get some initial impressions written into the draft. Then later I skipped over it because I thought I’d already reviewed it in full, and I had no idea until lady snow said… well, you just read it. So I threw another Barrel Aged Arrogant Bastard into the freezer, and we tried it, and now we’re ready to move on.

lady snow says: This is way boozier. It tastes sweeter to me. Drinking them side-by-side, Southern Charred makes Bourbon Barrel Bastard taste hoppier, and Bourbon Barrel Bastard makes Southern Charred taste sweeter. I prefer Southern Charred. Just my opinion.

make it snow says: Drinking Southern Charred right after eggnog with rye whisky makes it taste like toast. Or I’m having a stroke.

lady snow says: It makes it taste kind of like a hoppy glögg to me. I think it’s the spices in the eggnog.

DOUBLE BASTARD IN THE RYE

So here’s Double Bastard one more time, this time in Templeton rye whiskey barrels. A lot of what I had to say about Southern Charred goes just as well for this beer: the initial bitterness, the well-rounded sweetness. But the rye gives this a little added spiciness that makes Bastard In The Rye, in this alot of beer’s opinion, the best of the bunch.

lady snow says:  To me this is like the middle child compared to the Barrel Aged Arrogant Bastard and the Southern Charred. It’s boozier than the one but hoppier than the other.

make it snow says: Any thoughts about the Bastard lineup as a whole? Any discoveries? Lessons learned?

lady snow: I can’t keep these Bastards straight anymore. Just so many Bastards. All these fucking Bastards. I liked Southern Charred best though.

***

Bastards not included: Lukcy 13asartd; Oaked Double Bastard; Crime; Punishment.

make it snow is an alot of beer who has no more bastards, as far as he knows. His interests include peace on earth, goodwill to men, and the Sierra Nevada Celebration that’s in his glass right now. Enjoy whatever holidays you’re celebrating, and have a beer if you like.

Photo credit: me and some Bastards