Image by Flickr user mccun934
The Charleston Beer Exchange brigade apparently doesn't want you to taste any more of their beers after Tuesday.
At 5 p.m., Stone Brewing's Ruination IPA hits the growler station for Rare Beer Tuesday. This monstrous, 7.7% ABV hop-bomb gets a perfect 100 from Ratebeer and a solid A from BeerAdvocate. It exists quite literally to ruin your palate with its clearly labelled IBU (International Bittering Unit) rating of over 100. IBU's are to hop-heads what Scoville units are to hot sauce freaks: a badge of accomplishment for having ingested and enjoyed a high rating.
But Ruination is available year-round, you say? How could this be considered rare, you assert? It's not. But the double dry-hopped version packed with the pungent delight that is the Centennial hop surely is. While big hop additions early on in the brewing process help amp up bitterness, later additions juice up the aroma. Dry-hopping, the process of adding hops after the boil is complete, imparts only aroma and no bitterness. So in this case, dousing the beyond-bitter beer with hops means you'll get to experience every single aspect of what hops do to a beer's character in massive quantities. There should probably some kind of waiver involved in buying this.
Charleston Beer Exchange rocks around, that's right, on time at 14 Exchange Street downtown.