Stone Brewing

My first visit to the San Diego headquarters of Stone Brewing in 2016 changed the way I saw craft brewing, and what it could be. First was the beer itself, of course; that initial taste of a truly fresh West Coast IPA made sense of this landmark style for me, so different from the somewhat limp bottles I’d got my hands on back in the UK. Second was the sheer ambition, technical sophistication and scale of the place, far removed from the scrappy but charming UK breweries that had been the sum of my experience to that point.

Today, Stone ships a dizzying range of styles across the world. Its success rests on an uncanny ability to brew beer that is utterly distinctive, yet consistent regardless of where you buy it. I suggest to Stone’s director of brewing operations, Robert Kuntz that this level of technical accomplishment is only made possible by the technical brilliance of the brewer, high-end brewing kit and the lab. 

“Lab equipment doesn’t make beer. Humans make beer,” he corrects me, gracefully. “One of my mentors when I was attending grad school, Charlie Bamforth – a former technical director of Bass and well-known in craft beer circles – used to say to us over and again ‘if you take care of the people, the people will take care of the quality’. Two decades later, I’m still learning how important that is, and I would say it’s the fundamental element of our quality at Stone.

“What I’ve seen a lot of in the UK, and what I think a lot of people see when they think of craft, is this quite narrow focus on the brewer, and maybe the laboratory. But as soon as you start to scale, that’s not enough. We make over 165,000 hectolitres at our production brewery in Richmond, where I am, and in San Diego it’s double that. Over the next three years we’re on a trajectory to triple that volume here, so the question then becomes ‘how do you make a technically proficient beer that you can ship to many nations and still have it taste great?’ The answer is that it takes a very technically talented team.”