Stone Levitation Ale

Brewed by Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Amber Ale
Escondido, California USA

Light brown liquid with a nice tan head of fine foam. Nose is strong hoppy with a sense of pine needles. Taste is sharp, tangy, hoppy and more of the pine ness. Still not overpowering. good balance. medium malt in there. a nice, powerful yet happy beer.

Well, what do you know? Speaking of session brews packed with flavor and low in alcohol; enter Stone Levitation Ale. It never fails to baffle me that people will still choose to drink their watered down fizzy macro lagers that promise no flavor, but hey, only XX calories. Paf! Drink water. It’s free, tastes better, and has zero calories. What’s even better is the macro drinker of low-cal no-flavor light lagers will drink not just one, two, three, or even four of those brews. Nay, verily do I say they will go for the whole 6pack, and maybe even more. The night is young, after all, and they’re only XX calories per bottle so it can’t be all that bad, right? Um, sorry to illuminate your disillusion, but the average beer, lager or ale, doesn’t have that many more calories than your XX beer. What’s more, when you drink a quality brew packed with flavor and an average amount of calories, you drink less which means, in turn, at the end of the night you have consumed less all-around. But getting back to the Levitation Ale from Stone; a crisp, vibrant amber ale ale of epic tasty proportions, I’ll take a couple three of these any day over a 6pack or 12pack of the other stuff.

Copper, mahogany, garnet, ruby, and amber glimmers and glistens and sparkles shamelessly from within her glassy confines. A gently copper-tinged head floats lazily atop her pristine seas while wafting towards me upon a spunky breeze of ambition is an olfactory assault of awe-inspiring proportions. Crunchy sweet maple and brown sugar toasted to crystallized perfection linger as I find myself transported to the middle of a forest bursting with pine trees. Pine needles crunch and snap beneath feet and fingers; their resinous sap exuding sweet sticky piney esters with a gentle touch of bark even as grapefruit makes a play for my attentions. Forget the meat; white grapefruit skin and pith exude bitter citric esters even as oily hop resins exude greenness, their cones weighing heavily under fresh morning dew. Wow. That’s only the nose, I tell ya, the nose. Ready or not, here I come Stone Levitation Ale. Plunging deep into her gorgeous depths, I am amazed by how bright, clean, crisp, and straightforward her palate is. Every single promise her nose made, her palate holds true. Hops hit first, lingering with crushed pine needles, grapefruit skin, hop cones fresh off the vine, and oily hops resins. Sweet maple crunchies and crystallized brown sugar delights compliment melba toast, a solid support system for an otherwise veritable delight of hop freshness. The top of my tongue tingles and tickles, as if the pine needles and hops are right there in their pure whole form, poking and teasing and razing my senses in shameless abandon. I cannot emphasize enough the freshness which Stone Levitation exudes; you will just have to try her yourself to find out. Massive aroma and flavor with a crisp light mouthfeel makes for a bittersweet beautiful delight of sessionable ecstasy.

The more Stone beers I quaff, the more respect and pleasure I find in their beers. Just as Dogfish did with their Chicory Stout, so too does Stone accomplish with their Levitation Ale, proving that light doesn’t have to be a flavorless watery filler. If we all cared more about quality and choice, not quantity and sameness, ask yourself just how that would affect your world and the lens through which you viewed it.

Bottle. Mahogany-amber pour with a bit of an off-white head. Smell is interesting - nutty, smoky with a little bit of hops in the background. Perhaps some subtle caramel as well. The hops come through a bit in the taste, as does some nice malty flavor. Pretty good overall.

Nice full flavored tasty Ale. Not a bitter or abrupt Ale, but not creamy either. Stone makes a great selection of beers.

Dark, hazy brown with a smaller head. Stronger, maltier taste than most stone brews. Also, has a much lighter mouthfeel. Goes down very easy. I definitely recommend this.

Bottle. 12 oz. Pours slightly amber with a thin off-white head. Aroma of hops, barley, figs, and citrus. Thin, rather weak bodied with a crisp mouthfeel. Bland finish. Average amber ale from Stone.

(12oz, $1.69)

lct-cpr, lasting-wh-head, med-co2, med-body.

aroma: fresh-citrus-hops.

flavor: cmrl-malt fresh-hop T1, §toasty fresh-leafy-herbal-hop T2, herbal-hop-bitter T3.

amber-malt-complexity with lots of herbal-leafy-hops.
easy drinking session beer, great for backyard bbq/cookout.

Cask at the White Horse American Beer Festival, July 2009. Good prominent moist hop aroma. Maybe a little clammy. Clean and quite assertive for a relatively low ABV (in US terms) beer. Some sweetish fruity malt joins the hops in the flavour profile. Good drinking stuff. Worked rather well on cask.