On Valentine’s Day, things will get steamy at Stone Corral Brewery. As revelers huddle around outdoor firepits, puffs of malty mist will rise from their mugs — the result of a centuries-old tradition known as bierstacheln, or “beer poking,” in which brewers plunge red-hot metal rods into cold beers.
Bierstacheln (pronounced beer-shta-hll) isn’t just a Valentine’s Day thing; in fact, the timing is really only an excuse to double down on the “poking” jokes. Over the past year, Stone Corral has carved out a hot niche in Vermont’s beer scene, drawing crowds eager to poke a doppelbock, schwarzbier or blackberry sour even in subfreezing temperatures. It’s a novel event, and one that’s turned into an almost-monthly winter block party at the Richmond brewpub.
Stone Corral doesn’t charge an admission fee on poking days, just the cost of beer. Attendees order inside at the bar and are handed their full mugs to carry out to the firepits in the parking lot. Before the poke, drinkers are encouraged to take a few sips — both to taste the unadulterated brew for comparison’s sake and to make sure the beer doesn’t overflow when the head foams and rises from the heat of the poker.
For safety reasons, brewers Ryan McKeon and Brett Seymour do all the poking. The events are family friendly, and the brewers will happily poke a housemade root beer for kids.
McKeon and Seymour are pretty sure nobody was poking soda pop several hundred years ago in Germany, when bierstacheln originated. As the story goes, rather than drink frigid beer straight from the cellar in winter, blacksmiths stirred it with hot metal spikes to warm it up.
Hop Culture, an online beer-industry magazine, supports that theory, citing a blog post by Brauerei Weihenstephan in Bavaria — the oldest brewery in the world. Bierstacheln is gaining popularity in the U.S., Grace Lee-Weitz wrote, though it’s still relatively unknown.
“You ask any German and they go, ‘I’ve never heard of that,’” McKeon said with a laugh. He first encountered beer poking on Instagram, from a brewery in the American West.
Poking doesn’t really warm the beer beyond the head, Seymour said. But the sudden injection of heat reduces carbonation and transforms the flavor.
“It tastes so caramelized and lovely after the poke,” said Ruth Miller, a Richmond resident who’s attended all the bierstacheln events at Stone Corral.
A member of the Green Mountain Mashers homebrew club since 1998, Miller said she usually chooses a beer that has a lot of residual sugar left after fermentation, such as the Procrastinator doppelbock. Poking doesn’t just make a “wildly crazy foam,” she said, it also burns off some of the “big, malty lager’s” alcohol — a bonus when you’re trying to drink less boozy beers, as she is.
“It lets me enjoy it with a little more gusto,” Miller said.
But Miller’s always open to a recommendation from McKeon and Seymour, who spend the several hours of each event around the fire answering questions and helping attendees find beers they’ll love.
McKeon, 42, and Seymour, 41, are both Green Mountain Mashers alums. The friends started homebrewing while at Champlain College and got their industry start on the bottling line at Otter Creek Brewing 15 years ago. McKeon has been at Stone Corral for a decade; Seymour joined him two years ago after operating his own Collaborative Brewing in Waitsfield. They brew roughly 800 barrels per year in their 15-barrel brewhouse.
Stone Corral’s focus on traditional styles works especially well for bierstacheln, McKeon said. They typically have just one IPA on draft, and they don’t recommend poking it. Rather than tasting like a toasted marshmallow, hoppy beers veer into vegetal or barnyardy flavors, Seymour said.
Before the first event, he and McKeon tried poking all of the several dozen beers they brew, for science. They used branding irons, which Stone Corral already had on hand to stamp all the Western-themed brewery’s cherrywood tap handles. They knew the dark beers would taste good, but some of their favorites were a surprise, such as the Bramble blackberry sour.
“It was like berry pie,” Seymour said.
These days, the duo brews special beers specifically for the events, including a smoked-cherry porter and a coffee-vanilla stout. And McKeon has upgraded the pokers, as the branding irons were a little short.
“We wear gloves, [or] we wouldn’t have any hair left,” he joked.
They also didn’t have enough metal rods to keep up with the few hundred beers downed at each event, some of which are poked up to three times. So he cut some Queen City Steel rods down to size and dusted off his lathe to turn handles. Now they’ve got enough pokers to keep them hot for the duration of the event — and even into the evening beyond, as long as the coals are still glowing.
“It’s like late night around a campfire,” McKeon said. “You always get people that just kind of hang out.”
The events’ big turnout is a boon for the small brewery during a tough time in the industry. It’s a chance to connect with their regulars, Seymour said, and draw new folks from Richmond and beyond.
“I see all these people that I hardly ever see otherwise,” Miller said. “It’s not just beer geeks. Everybody comes out for beer poking.”
If you have other — ahem — poking plans on Valentine’s Day, Stone Corral is planning bierstacheln events in March and April, too.
