SEATTLE—Merchant du Vin and Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery are proud to announce the fifth U.S. annual release of Samuel Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo. This barrel-aged, bottle-conditioned strong ale expresses the elegant refinement of every Samuel Smith’s beer, but with depth, length and power found in no other beer. This is a must-try beer: Extreme meets over 250 years of brewing experience.

Vintage dated, Stingo is available nationally each year around England’s “Yorkshire Day,” August first. This 2013 release was brewed in 2012, then matured for a year at the brewery. ABV varies a bit each year – this year, Stingo fermented to 9.0% ABV. Production of this fine ale will always be extremely limited.

A traditional strong ale that originated in the north of England, “Stingo” is mentioned in literature before 1700. Samuel Smith’s Stingo melds the signature elegance of the brewery’s ales with a long historical tradition. Brewed from British malts and multiple hop varieties, Stingo is fermented in open-topped stone Yorkshire Squares, then aged in oak barrels that previously held cask-conditioned ale, gaining subtle complexity from the wood. Some of the barrels at Samuel Smith’s are over a century old – if a cask is damaged, the coopers carefully replace broken staves and put the cask back into service.

Samuel Smith’s Stingo shows rich, superb flavors of toffee, raisin, dried fruit, and caramel; waves of flavor ascend and ebb leaving soft oak notes. Hops add a perfect enhancement to dramatic malt and fermentation flavors, but without pushing bitterness past the point of balance. Bottle conditioning – that is, including live yeast in each bottle – produces soft carbonation, a fruity aroma and finish, and allows Stingo to age and develop in the bottle.

Serve Stingo alone as the ultimate digestif, or pair with beef, wild game, or demanding deeply-flavored foods like pickled fish or strong aromatic cheeses. Try with lamb, duck, smoked meats, or Kalamata olives; serve in a nonik glass or red wine glass and remember to pour gently, leaving the remaining brewers yeast behind in the bottle.

OG: 1.080 – ABV: 9.0%

Color 60 EBC (30 SRM)

IBU: 30-35

Established in 1758, Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery is independent and committed to quality, using the finest ingredients available for their full line of beer, and naturally gluten-free cider. The portfolio also includes seven Certified Organic offerings.

In addition to Samuel Smith, Merchant du Vin imports Traquair House from Scotland; Ayinger and Certified Organic Pinkus beers from Germany; Lindemans lambics, Green’s Gluten-Free beers, Du Bocq, and the Trappist beers of Orval, Westmalle, and Rochefort from Belgium.

Big Brands Get The Budget Cut

And like the big domestic brands, big-name imports are tanking in post-economic meltdown America. Imports are down nearly 10 percent in barrelage through September, according to the Beer Institute. Familiar names like Foster’s Lager, Amstel Light, Bass Ale, Pilsner Urquell, Moosehead and Grolsch have seen U.S. sales drop by double digits. Fewer Americans are drinking Guinness (down 5 percent), in spite of the hoopla surrounding the brewer’s 250th anniversary, which included the introduction of a special anniversary beer and a series of concerts worldwide.

The conventional wisdom is that financially pinched beer drinkers are trading down from $8 six-packs of green and clear bottles to budget brands like Keystone Light. There just isn’t enough difference in flavor to justify paying for a beer’s boat ride across the ocean.

It’s a little more complicated for Corona and Heineken, the lead brands dragging down the whole pack. “The old guard has been caught off guard,” comments beer industry consultant Bump Williams. He cites a number of factors, ranging from import pricing being “out of whack” to the desertion of former Corona spokesman Jimmy Buffett to hawk Anheuser-Busch’s Land Shark brand. He also mentions that the soft economy has prompted the exodus of minorities who consumed a great deal of Corona. “It costs them more money to live here as opposed to a year-and-a-half ago when they were sending money home.”

But just as domestic beer is buoyed by a craft beer segment (up 5 percent in spite of the recession), the import segment has its bright spots. “Our sales are up,” comments Craig Hartinger, marketing manager for Merchant du Vin, the Tukwila, WA-based company that imports Samuel Smith’s ales, Lindemans lambics, the gluten-free Green’s Belgian-style beers and numerous other brands. “There ought to be a category called craft imports,” he asserts. But no one has attempted to define such a category, let alone tabulate barrels.

Supply and Demand

It appears counter-intuitive that in the midst of a recession consumers would be splurging on the priciest segment of the beer industry, but Steve Cardello floats the idea of beer as an affordable luxury. “If you ask what you can buy with a ten spot, merchants who sell gourmet cheese, Scotch and cigars will laugh you out of their stores,” comments Cardello, market manager for Duvel Moortgat USA. “You can’t even buy a boxed wine for that price. But you can go out and buy a 750-mililiter bottle of one of the best beers on the planet for $10.”

Cardello notes that bottle sales of Duvel, the archetypal Belgian strong pale ale, are up 8 percent. In spite of dwindling on-premise sales as customers opt to eat and drink at home, the draft-only Duvel Green is doing almost as well. This lighter cousin of Duvel (6.8 percent ABV, as opposed to 8.5 percent) is made from the same ingredients but doesn’t undergo the secondary fermentation that Duvel undergoes in the bottle. “Because of the intense pressure that builds up, the kegs would explode,” elaborates Cardello. “A draft presence is a must,” he continues. “The first thing I do when I’m at a bar is look at the taps long before I look at the bottle listing.”

It’s clear that many beer connoisseurs are equal-opportunity buyers of flavorful and quirky beers, regardless of their point of origin.

The Hook Norton Brewery isn’t a dream but you have to pinch yourself to believe it exists. It stands in a small town of the same name, with chunky cottages built of mellow stone. Although it’s only a few miles from the major Oxfordshire town of Banbury, Hook Norton is hidden down winding country roads, and suddenly emerges from a dip in the gentle hills. Putting God before Mammon, first the tall and imposing church tower appears above the hedgerows, followed by a second tower that is part of the brewery.

You find, with the help of friendly locals, Brewery Lane and suddenly the full force of this architectural gem is upon you. Hook Norton is a Victorian “tower brewery,” standing six stories proud, with the brewing process flowing naturally from floor to floor.

It seems remarkable that this imposing stone and wood building should exist in an isolated rural area. But in 1849, with the industrial revolution going full throttle, brewing was turning from an innkeepers’ sideline into a major business that quenched the thirsts of factory and farm workers. Hook Norton not only had farm laborers in abundance but industry as well: an ironstone quarry produced building materials between 1884 and 1948, and the railroad came to the village in 1887, the line dug out of the hills by an army of navvies with an insatiable need for refreshment.

Both quarry and railroad have long gone, but Hook Norton Brewery survives as a working brewery museum. If you clamber up and down the narrow stairs and walkways in the brewery, you will catch not a glimpse but a full and inspiring picture of brewing in the 19th century. Managing Director James Clarke, whose family owns the company, is at pains to stress they are not running some quaint piece of folklore but a modern business. Nevertheless, Hook Norton stands as a magnificent piece of history and a brilliant example of craft brewing at a time when many modern plants are run not by people but by soulless computers.

The brewery’s history dates from 1849. John Harris set up in business as a maltster in the village, supplying grain to local pubs where beer was still made on the premises. It’s likely that Harris also brewed for his family and farm workers. In 1856 he installed fermenters and other equipment on the farm and became a serious brewer as well as maltster.

Harris the brewer flourished. By 1872 he had built a three-story brewery on the farm and when the business passed to his relations, the Clarkes, they commissioned the leading brewery architect of the time, William Bradford, to construct the present majestic site.

Fittingly, the new Hook Norton brewery came into operation in 1900, celebrating the birth of a new century. All the equipment was run by a 25-horse power steam engine built by Buxton & Thornley of Burton-on-Trent for around $250. The engine is still the heart beat of the brewery today, huffing and puffing as it drives the malt mill that grinds the malt, then sends brewing water and grain to mash tuns, coppers and fermenters.

Some of the original pieces of equipment—a stone malt mill and copper, for example—can still be viewed in the brewery. But many vessels have been replaced over the years. The current mash tun, where the malt is mixed with pure hot water to start the brewing process, came from Ruddles of Rutland. The copper, where the sugary extract is boiled with hops, came from another defunct and famous brewery, Flowers of Cheltenham.

The most astonishing piece of kit lies beneath the brewery roof. It’s an open wort cooler or “cool ship” that must surely now be unique in Britain. When the wort is boiled with hops, the liquid has to be cooled before fermentation. With the help of that amazing steam engine, the wort rises to the top of the brewery and settles in the large open pan. Louvered windows allow cool breezes to enter and lower the temperature.

The wort then drops down several stories into fermenting vessels. They are a joy to behold, circular wooden vessels known as “rounds,” the staves held in place by great iron hoops.