First, An example beer post.

I love a good beer. Whether it be American, German, Scandinavian or Belgian, from any country. If the brewer takes the time and effort to make a quality product, I will usually enjoy it. My average rating on BeerAdvocate is a B+, 3.87/5.00 at the moment. Mostly because I seek out the highest rated beers in the world and also because what I mentioned above, I enjoy most beer from craft or respected breweries. The kind of breweries that take time and use quality ingredients to make a nice beverage. Not the ones that advertise about how freezing "ultra-cool" cold they can make there watered down, rice/corn brewed lagers. I am living in a time where craft/micro/nano/pico breweries are flourishing, with hundreds of new, small-batch operations popping-up every year. I also homebrew and have found that you basically get what you give. Hard-work, good planning and good ingredients pay off, unless the combination of these ingredients just sucks (i.e. random spices or too much of them, too many oak chips for way too long and the beer tastes like pure wood, etc). I usually only rate beers badly if somehow the brewer just really missed it on a recipe, like some Barleywines that just taste like caramel vodka, or "old-world" beers that taste like chemical juniper floral doom. Also, like I mentioned above the BMC/InBev/Coors/Miller/Macrobrewery 60%+ market share that don't want beers to taste good but want to freeze your taste buds so you can't actually experience how bad the wretched elixir tastes. I am certainly not saying I don't enjoy a product from these guys every once in a blue moon but they are purely in it for cash and not for making a living off a good product. You get what you give.

Alright, enough ranting but I had to start off the beer section that way so it all makes more sense. I give high praise to many beers.

One beer that has always been great to me is Stone Ruination. It was the second beer I ever reviewed and continues to be one of my favorites over two years later. I have had it too many times to count, on-tap and in the bottle. Aim to get a bottle with a best before date around 4-6 months away but I have had bottles that were at the best-before date and they were still fine.

Ruination pours into my snifter with a nice apricot skin orange hue and a creamy white head. The size and retention of the head are pretty good. A frothy pillow and ring remain on the beer throughout the experience leaving some cool spotty lacing. The aroma of Ruination might be my favorite part of the beer. With the right degree of freshness this 7.7% brew releases good peach, orange, lemon zest, citrus and pine hop notes. The nose, for all intensive purposes, is all hops. The flavor of the beer follows suit from the aroma with a big hop explosion beating down on the palate. As with many IPAs, the hops in the flavor are sort of re-arranged from what they were in the aroma. There is a bit less of the peach/citrus fruit and more of the pine hops in the taste. The flavor is truly a great palate-numbing blend of pine, peach, citrus, zest, floral and big bitterness. Great use of hops. There is a bit of the underlying yeast bread and caramel malt in the taste as well. The body of the beer is substantially thick enough to support the big flavor and it has a nice creamy, silky texture. Once again, bitterness dominates the palate in the after-taste.

Stone Ruination is a Double IPA that I will continue to purchase year after year. It brings a great barrage of hops to the table with a superb array of flavors. It is definitely unbalanced but that is sort of the point, bring the hops and break the palate. Don't expect subsequent beers to taste right after having one or two of these.

My apartment needs some brighter lighting but these are the best photos I got of the glorious hop bomb.