Stone IPA Beer Review - Independently Crafted

March 5, 2023 Cameron Mackenzie

This one is a rollercoaster ride folks, please strap in…

First I need to start with a shock admission… There was a time when this beer reviewer didn’t drink beer. After early formative experiences with the widely available big name lagers and beers of the day, I just kind of gave up, writing them off as not for me. I would drink stout, cider sometimes, but that was about it for probably a decade.

Then I spent a couple of years going back and forth to California on various trips for projects I was working on. Around this time the US craft scene was starting to really bloom again. After dismissing beer as not for me, I found myself in a world of options I didn’t know existed and realised that I needed to reevaluate what I considered beer. I discovered a new love for strong IPAs from a variety of brewers, but the established benchmark beers of this era were Sierra Nevada (Usually Torpedo, their 7.2% Extra IPA) and, our subject today, Stone Brewing and their self-titled flagship West Coast original, Stone IPA.

Stone Brewing, based in Escondido, California, was founded in 1996 by Steve Wagner and Greg Koch. Two friends who were home brewing and decided to go further, initially from an industrial unit in San Marcos. Stone IPA was born in August 1997 and is credited to Wagner as Brewmaster. Though it was not necessarily the first West Coast IPA, it certainly became one of the most popular and ultimately, as Stone themselves proclaim it, “the IPA that launched generations of hop fanatics”.

Continuing to grow and produce other beers, stouts and even lager, Stone moved to its larger main site in Escondido in 2005. By 2013, Stone Brewing became one of the ten largest independent breweries in the United States. And they were fiercely independent, Greg Koch led the company and was a staunch advocate for the craft movement, even going so far as to start a distribution wing as part of efforts to widen the availability for other craft brewers.

As the boom continued in the 2010s, many of Stone's peers such as Goose Island, Lagunitas, Founders, Sweetwater and even Ballast Point sold to major beverage conglomerates, while Stone held their ground as the charismatic independent champion. Proudly pledging in a 2016 You Tube video to “never, ever, sell out to the man.” Koch would also take the underdog fight to MillerCoors (now Molson Coors) head-on in 2018, when MC rebranded their economy brand Keystone Light Beer as ‘Stone. Again on You Tube, Koch explained the basics of the fight they would make legally and tried a Keystone Light on camera before spitting it out. This fight went to a jury trial with Stone Brewing ultimately awarded $56 million in damages.

At this point, Stone IPA and it's more sessionable sibling Stone Go To IPA, were widely available in the UK and became a beer and brewery I grew to love before our own UK beer market grew so much imports weren’t as prevalent and Stone quietly faded into my personal drinking history.

It’s easy to look at Stone and see the inspiration for many breweries that followed them, also looking to representing something of a craft David to the big business Goliath. With Brewdog arguably being the most successful to draw inspiration. The two breweries have collaborated on several occasions, including the creation of Double IPA Bashah in 2009.

With all this deep in my mind, it was something of a nostalgic shock when a friend at a Christmas get-together showed up with Stone IPA in hand, remembering me evangelising about them so many years ago, while I hadn’t had a can in years.

The beer itself is a 6.9% strongly hoppy but flavourful, medium bodied drink with a lucious clear amber look. The taste is a little piney, perhaps a tad spicy to some, but with a smooth crisp lingering bitter finish and a floral, citrus aroma. Initially brewed with Centennial, Chinook and Columbus hops, the recipe has evolved over time with Stone saying the current version adds Magnum, Azacca, Calypso and Ella & Vic Secret hops. Even with these changes, the taste remained consistent to this reviewer's memory and enjoyment of the beer after more than a decade of drinking it.

I find it hard to say drinking beer was an emotional experience, but this can of Stone IPA definitely had something of a nostalgic homecoming feel. Freshly reunited with this lost love I wanted to write this article, see what my ultimate underdog had been doing since we lost touch and I promised you a rollercoaster and here it really comes… In summer 2022, Stone IPA was sold to Sapporo Holdings, the Japanese giant.The last bastion of the independents, the one that didn’t give up. Surely this was wrong?

But it is true and the beer that made me reevaluate my view of the drink was about to make me reevaluate my take on the beer business. On a closer look it’s easy to see what led to this sale. As it came out in court against Molson Coors, Stone Brewing had taken significant investment from private equity firms and had large debts, only added to by an overall downturn and then global pandemic, with Koch standing down as CEO in 2020. They had sold their Berlin brewing operation to Brewdog in 2018 in a cost saving move, perhaps another major reason their beer had became less available looking back. With this in mind, the lawsuit with Molson Coors seems less idealistic and more of a defiant fight for their survival.

With a looming repayment to investors coming in 2023, a downturn in business announced as 20%, it becomes clear that the business did what it needed to continue. With this in mind, the press release quote of Maria Stipp, Stone’s current CEO seems more poignant, “This unique partnership allows us to preserve the Stone legacy that our fans know and love and will add exponential opportunities for growth, from production to more investment in people, equipment, sales, and marketing.”

Closing in August 2022, 25 years after the launch of Stone IPA, the brewery sold in a deal believed to be worth around $165 million. The 2016 video “Why we have chosen not to sell out to big beer” is now set to private on their YouTube, but their distribution company was spun out into a separate organisation as part of the deal, continuing to provide wider distribution for smaller craft brewers.

Because of all of this, I can’t be sure when the can of Stone IPA I tasted was brewed, was it a fierce independent beer or part of a large brewing multinational portfolio? Ultimately I have to realise it doesn’t actually matter, it’s not the beer's responsibility. Stone was already one of the top 20 breweries by volume in the US, no longer really making the cut as a craft brewery anyway and, perhaps so big they were on the verge of failing. Will the deal with Sapporo, who have a European brewing operation, see the return of Stone IPA commonly in the UK and Europe? We will have to wait and see, but as long as it remains a bold beer and doesn’t change so much it becomes unrecognisable, I have to see its survival and potential availability as a good thing.