And it Stoned Me at the Spoke (Stone Brewing at Twisted Spoke 04-01-10)

This past Thursday, April 1 2010, I went over to one of my favorite beer/bourbon bars, Twisted Spoke (Grand and Ogden) for a special event with Stone Brewing. As many of you have probably heard, Stone Brewing is pretty much taking over many bars/taps/stores this week with a large selection of their beers, which have never been sold in Illinois before now. On that note, I have never before had the chance to try any beers from Stone Brewing before this event, which was the first day to kick-off the "Stone Beer Week in Chicago". All 20 of the taps were Stone beers! I got there around 5:45pm, and by about 6:15pm the place was packed as you can see from the photo.

Even though we had to wait a while for our first round of beers, it was worth it and the bartenders were trying their best to accommodate the early crowd. We first got the Double Dry Hopped IPA (which was excellent and maybe my favorite), Sublimely Self-Riteous Ale, 13th Anniversary Ale, and Smoked Porter (which was also excellent). Second round was Arrogant Bastard Dry Hopped, Levitation, Ruination, and Vanilla Porter. You can find lots more great information about all the Stone beers on their website here.

The beers that we tried are noted (by check marks) on the full list of beers available, which is shown here in this post (click it to view larger). We also met a very nice and knowledgeable guy who marked on list which beers you can find in bottles or not. Glad I got that Double Dry Hopped IPA before the tap ran out! I might attend another Stone beer event next week, where I may try some of the other rarer/stronger beers such as the Bel-Go Barley Wine or the Russian Imperial Stout Barrel Aged. But I just couldn't handle these during my time at Twisted Spoke. All the beers I had there were a great introduction to Stone Brewing for me, and they left me, well, kinda stoned!