Stone Punishment

Punishment is a 12.0% ABV and 82 IBU special limited release from Stone Brewing of Escondido, San Diego County, California (they should also give its Scoville units, which measure spicy heat levels). It is part of their Quingenti Millilitre series released in 500 ml (thence the name) bottles holding on imperial pint. This is batch number 9 of the 2013 series, bottled in October of 2013. It is the partner to Crime.

This beer results from taking that Double Bastard and adding large amounts of freshly harvested peppers, including red and green jalapenos, along with ultra-hot black nagas, Caribbean red hots, Moruga scorpions, and fatalis peppers. This was then aged in American oak bourbon barrels from Kentucky. 

The beer pours a cloudy brown with orange and red tints. There is a short head of very light brown foam, somewhat thick. The aroma is very strong hot peppers, with roasted pepper smell and heat, over a woody, vanilla, hint of bourbon, semi-sweetness. The beer tastes exactly as it smells, it is blazingly hot and burns the back of the throat. The entire palate just tingles like static electricity with all of the hot peppers. Yet under all that, there is also roasted pepper flavor, and the oaky wood, vanilla, bourbon and carmelized, malty sweetness. I love hot peppers, but it is hard to take a sip of this that is small enough to not cause coughing from the heat going down the throat. There is a lingering, burn and sizzle in the mouth and throat, and the flavors linger as well.

If you aren’t a big fan of hot peppers, then avoid (I am serious). Even if you are a fan, this is a pint best split, it becomes a bit overwhelming (not from the heat so much as its massiveness in every way). These beers were a mixed bag for me, with some very enjoyable aspects, but also a strange vomit like vibe.

I saw this beer for sale at Zombie Burger in Des Moines, the chalkboard sign said ‘No take backsies.” Very true, no going back once you get into this beer. 

(By the way, if you have never read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, then your life is incomplete and you should immediately get the book and read it.)