Daily Pint's Stone Vertical Epic Release Night Recap

Wednesday night's 09.09.09 Vertical Epic release was a big success at The Daily Pint in Santa Monica. After braving a bit of heavy traffic on the 10 fwy filled with people who were probably heading to see the pier's 100th year birthday party firework show we arrived at a pretty packed bar. The bartenders were working their magic and it didn't take long before we got our pours of 09.09.09. To be honest I was expecting a bit more. It was a good beer, don't get me wrong, but other than what I may normally expect out of an imperial porter there seemed to be nothing else. I didn't get any citrus from the tangerine peel, or vanilla from the vanilla beans. Even the Belgian yeast quality seemed to be very muted. I'll be opening up the bottle of this beer tomorrow and hope it leaves me with a different impression.

Aside from the Vertical Epic, lots of other good Stone beer was flowing, most notably the Smoked Porter with vanilla bean. It was the most vanilla tasting batch I've had, by far. It was the perfect beer to wash down my Frank's Hot Dogs "Hot" Dog with extra hot sauce. Tasty dog but I must say it was quite overpriced. $5 for something that wasn't even that big? I thought you only paid that much for a hot dog at Dodger games. I could get 2 huge ass burritos from a taco truck for the same price as that hot dog. Aaanyway, it was a fun night with the Beer Geek LA gathering going on there, and it was good to finally meet the head Beer Geek... er "Beer Guy" - Dave - of Hair of the Dog Dave fame who I have conversed with for a couple/few years via email and these blogs. Thanks for the glass of La Folie by the way Dave, if you still read this.

The Daily Pint is definitely worth future stops on my trips out to the west side.