Stone Brewing has brewed a collaboration West Coast IPA with Vic Fuentes of Pierce The Veil, timed to the band's sold-out September 12 show in San Diego. It is the hometown both parties share. Stone Pierce the Veil IPA is 6.5% ABV and 60 IBUs, packaged in 4-packs of 16-ounce cans.

The recipe came from Kris Ketcham, Stone's Sr. Manager of Brewing and Innovation. The brewery says he was working from Fuentes' interest in San Diego beer and classic West Coast IPAs. "We wanted to create a recipe that was true to our roots while embracing some newer trends in West Coast IPAs," Ketcham says in Stone's release notes.

The hop bill reads like a direct answer to that. Centennial dates to the era the style was built in, and still supplies the resin-and-grapefruit backbone that people mean when they say West Coast. Citra, El Dorado, and Krush all arrived later, and pull toward stone fruit and tropical citrus. Four hops is a restrained number by current standards, and the split between them is doing most of the work.

Stone describes an aroma of mango, papaya, and grapefruit alongside dank pine and citrus zest. The beer itself, the brewery says, is brilliant pale gold and crystal clear, with a thick, lasting white head. The palate, per the brewery, is light-bodied and dry with a resinous finish. That insistence on clarity is worth noting on its own: at a moment when most fruit-forward hop aroma arrives in a hazy package, this one is being presented as deliberately bright and see-through.

The brewery is calling the release hyper-limited. It pours exclusively at Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens - Liberty Station starting Saturday, August 29, then reaches the rest of Stone's locations and select San Diego bars and retailers the week of August 31. Stone is marking the launch at Liberty Station that Saturday from 11am to 3pm, with exclusive merch and flash tattoos by Bobby Johnson.

Editor’s Take

The musician collaboration beer is one of beer culture's more reliably low-effort formats: take the flagship, put a band logo on the can, book a signing, go home. So it is genuinely cheering that this one appears to have started with a hop question instead of a design brief.

The evidence is Centennial. Nobody reaches for Centennial because they want a beer to taste current. You reach for it when you want grapefruit pith and pine resin and a bitterness that does not soften the landing - the hop of the era Stone came up in. Setting it against El Dorado and Krush, which are handling the tropical end, is the entire assignment expressed in four hop varieties. Read Stone's own tasting notes in order and you can watch it happen: mango, papaya, grapefruit, and then, a beat later, dank pine. Two generations of West Coast IPA passing each other on the stairs and nodding.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Pierce the Veil IPA Sets Centennial Against El Dorado and Krush

Stone's collaboration with Vic Fuentes of Pierce The Veil is a West Coast IPA built to a specific brief: Centennial for the old school, El Dorado and Krush for the new. It arrives two weeks before the band's hometown show.

Source & Editorial