Seasonal Creep Is Boiled With Hot Rocks, Steeped on Roasted Apples

Boiling wort with rocks is an old solution to an old problem.

Before brewers had vessels that could take direct fire, the way to get a boil was to heat stones until they glowed and lower them into the liquid. Sugar scorched onto the stone the instant it went in, caramelizing on contact, and the beer came out tasting of it. In parts of southern Germany the practice outlasted its own necessity and hardened into a recognized style. Nobody needs to brew this way in 2026. Brewers who do are after a flavor that no other step produces.

Fonta Flora Brewery has used it on Seasonal Creep, an 8 percent imperial stout steeped on fire-roasted apples, house-made oat milk and caramel syrup.

Read that ingredient list next to the technique and a pattern shows up. Stone-boiling caramelizes sugar with heat. The apples are fire-roasted, which concentrates their sugars and adds char. The caramel syrup is the same idea arriving pre-made. Three of the four defining elements of this beer are versions of controlled scorching, stacked on top of each other, and the fourth is there to hold them.

That fourth is the oat milk, made in house. Oats bring a rounder, silkier body to a stout without the dairy sugar a milk stout leans on, and in a beer this insistent about char it is the element keeping everything from turning sharp.

Apples in an imperial stout remain unusual. Roasted, they land closer to baked fruit than to cider - darker, jammier, with the acidity pulled down - which is a more natural fit against roasted malt than raw apple would be. The timing helps too. Mid-September is the front end of apple season, so this is a seasonal beer using an ingredient that is genuinely in season.

The can carries a green apple drawn as a skull against a gray web. Fonta Flora photographed it being poured on a barrel head in an open field, and the pour is nearly black with a deep tan head.

Seasonal Creep is available starting September 11 through Fonta Flora's wholesale accounts, with availability questions going to local account representatives.