Stone - Ruination IPA

I get the impression from every Stone bottle I've ever read that I am, in the eyes, of the brewery, a massive waste of blood and guts, a pansy with limp wrists and facial hair that grows pink and eventually turns into cotton candy; that I am a tiny little, pigtailed, girl in a world built for big, masculine, men and that I shouldn't try whatever beer it is because I'll hurt my tongue and I'll go crying to my mum... Whom they later insinuate they had intercourse with. That's EVERY bottle of Stone beer... Except this one, which is polite by comparison. Hushed warnings and mild insults with mere insinuations that the customer bats for the wrong team, but this is my introduction to Stone so I better start with the lighter stuff, eh? Don't get me wrong, I've had Stone before but it's always been from someone else's glass. This bottle's MINE dammit!

The pour is well controlled, cloudy, pale, bordering on an orange hue with an uneven half finger head that sticks around long after. There's mild carbonation but in certain lights it seems to glow, making me think that the secret ingredient at the Stone brewery may well be Uranium. I'm expecting BIG hops from this, but the bottle says 100+ IBU's... Which could easily mean it's 200... Or 1000!!! Where does it end?!

I agree with the people at Stone, if you cannot handle this beer then you should go back to drinking milk, eating cookies and breast feeding because this is indeed a heavily hopped IPA but, like most of the kids in the Breakfast Club,  it's also got other stuff going for it too. There's a smoothness and thickness that I've come to expect from American IPAs, it's that same sensation I had when I first had the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA, it's a sensation that asks you ONCE whether you wish to continue and then starts pummelling you in the gut like a deranged drill instructor who's just gone through a messy divorce and has lost his meds.

It may sound stupid to say it but when you drink this you can almost smell the brewery, the malt aromas come out when you get close enough to give this beer an enema and they add a whole different dimension to this beer that you don't get with a great many IPAs. A lot concentrate on hops alone when the backbone of any good beer is your malt. Stone seem to understand this, they seem to understand a lot of things, mostly about becoming a kung-fu lumberjack and other such manly endeavours.

Food suggestions: For some reason Americans hate Indian food, a fact that baffles me daily, which means I can't pair this IPA with Indian food as I normally would, but this would go AMAZINGLY with MEXICAN FOOD! AWWWWW YEAH! Spicy meat, side of rice?! It's basically the same thing!!! :D

Drink this if you like: Big hoppy IPAs with a strong malt backbone. Similar to the Dogfish Head 60 and 90 minute IPAs, but for making you feel like a complete dick for giving them money, they're in a league of their own.