Beer Blogging

Today we have the Ruination IPA from Stone Brewing Co. (the brewers of the more famous Arrogant Bastard Ale).



This is an India Pale Ale, which means it should be bitter and have a strong flavor, and it lives up to this goal for sure. From the back of the bottle:

Stone Ruination IPA. So called because of the immediate ruinous effect on your palate. The moment after the first swallow, all other food and drink items suddenly become substantially more bland than they were just seconds before. By the time you develop a taste for this beer, you may find that you are permenantly ruined from being able to enjoy lesser brews.

At the first sip, this beer kicks you right in the mouth. Hops, hops and more hops. After you get past the initial bitterness, though, there's more: a light malty flavor, and a surprisingly refreshing aftertaste, dry but not too dry. This beer has 7.7% ABV, but it hides it very well - you get very little hint of all that alcohol. You can tell that somebody put a lot of time into crafting the Ruination IPA.

I would recommend this beer, but only if you already really like hoppy beers in general and IPAs in particular. If not, you'll probably get lost in all the bitterness, and it won't be that pleasant of a drinking experience. And nobody wants that.

Rating: 10/10

Beer Blogging

I like beer.

A lot. In fact, I have a beer bottle collection numbering literally in the hundreds, each bottle different. There are bottles on my walls and cupboards from Morocco, Belgium, Ethiopia, and multiple other countries around the world.





Anyway, since I drink so much beer, I've decided to start reviewing some beers that I drink, in the tradition of Toast and because of the suggestion of Commandante Agi. I thought I'd start out with a great one, the Optimator from Spaten.



This is a serious beer; actually, according to the bottle this is a malt liquor. It doesn't at all have a traditional malt liquor taste or color, though. Most malt liquors are, for lack of a better word, cheap-tasting, as though the brewers tried to cram as much malt and yeast into the mix as possible to jack up the alcohol content, and forgot about creating flavor altogether.

This beer has a nice, solid head that dissipates after a couple minutes, as it should. It's neither exceedingly malty (it has a roasted, not sweet, malt flavor) nor hoppy, which gives it a complex flavor without any one element really dominating. You can definitely taste the hops, though, which you would expect from a beer this dark. The aftertaste is not too strong, but it lasts for a while. The Optimator has 7.2% alcohol by volume, which is fairly strong, but you can't really taste the alcohol while you drink it. This beer goes down smooth.

Spaten Optimator is highly recommended for anyone who's a fan of dark, flavorful beers. If you're a fan of lighter beers and don't like the bitterness of dark beers, this would be a good one to start on, since there is not too much bitterness. It's there, but it's nicely balanced out by the maltiness of the beer.

Rating: 9/10