An annual release three times running, Stone Farking Wheaton Woot Stout is “a three person collaboration” beer with Stone Brewing founder Greg Koch, epic nerd hero Wil Wheaton and Drew Curtis (creator of Fark.com.) The origins of this beer originally trace back to 2005 when Stone Brewing discovered aforementioned Wil Wheaton was the 10,000th person to sign up for Stone’s e-mail newsletter. As a big fan of beer and Stone brewing, this helped forge a friendly relationship between Wil and founder Greg Koch. You see, Wil has been an avid home brewer and beer enthusiast for years so it’s only natural that this relationship developed over time and eventually lead to a collaboration beer for us geeks to enjoy. Check out more about the origin of Stone Farking Woot Stout in the video below for a quick introduction to the beer.

What’s particularly interesting about this beer is how it’s evolved over time and features a different label artist each year from the world of comics and online artistry. The first rendition had a limited release featuring art by Joel Watson of HijiNKS Ensue, the second release featured art by Watchman artist Dave Gibbons and finally last year’s 3.0 version was drawn by renowned cover artist Dave “The Reverend” Johnson who drew the bottle art in exchange for a Hero Initiative donation from Stone Brewing. Hero Initiative provides retirement support for Golden Age comic artists, many of whom worked for pennies and retained little or no ownership rights to anything they created, nor have any sort of company pension.

This is a beer that embraces the past, the present and the future of all geeks alike with a label that features drawings of each collaborator in comic form. As you can see in the title picture, this Stone Farking Wheaton Woot Stout 3.0 beer pours an incredibly dark brown color with 3 fingers of tan colored foam and no visible bubbles. It has an aroma of tobacco, oak, vanilla on the top of the nose with a backbone of molasses, espresso and dark chocolate boozy liquor that treats to olfactory senses. The tastes are very similar, featuring tobacco and dark chocolate up front, booze, shoe leather and pecans in the middle, and dark coffee, oak, bourbon, vanilla on the finish with a blast of molasses on the aftertaste.

Known commonly as Woot Stout, this is a complicated beer that creates an intense storyline of flavors, introducing the intricacies of each of its characters at first, mixing them up in the middle while leading up to an exciting and enormously satisfying finish, much like a good story should (but it’s a beer!). They truly set out to create something “weird, amazing and unique” to each of the creators, which is exactly how Wil introduced it in the video and I think they largely succeeded. Let’s hope we see Woot Stout 4.0 in the late Spring as usual and be sure to pick up a bottle or two if you see it. Just remember it’s about a 12% alcohol by volume beer, so maybe share it with someone and rejoice in your geekdom together.

-By West Coast Beer Geek, Guest Blogger. (Official Site | Like “West Coast Beer Geek” on Facebook | Follow “West Coast Beer Geek” on Twitter)