CURTIS HENRY
Sports Editor
As always, there are a few things to take into account when reading this column. I’m not a professional beer connoisseur, nor am I a food critic. I should probably never write for the Life & Arts section, but they keep on bringing me back.
This week, there is something more important to discuss than ever before in this column. That is the existence of India Pale Ales, commonly known as IPAs.
For whatever reason, many members of society have been fooled by this sham of a beverage that presents itself as a beer. “I love IPAs” is a set of three words that I hear far too often, mainly from my hipster friends who are too proud and boujee to crack open a Busch like the rest of us broke college kids.
My question for those people is very simple: How? How are you a fan of IPAs? What have they ever done for you? Do you actually think they taste good?
Because they do not taste good. Absolutely not. This week, I walked into EBC West as usual and plopped my ass down on a bar stool and braced myself to taste another one of their delicious craft brews that have been growing on me more and more as of late. Instead, what I received was a personal attack on my taste buds by an IPA known as Stainless Steel.
Stainless Steel is actually the perfect name for this brew, because it tastes as if a bunch of rusty steel nails were liquefied in a blender as a part of some cruel joke. Unfortunately, this is not a joke, because there are some supposed “humans” walking the earth who claim to like this beverage. I use the term humans loosely here, because to enjoy such a beverage you must clearly be a spawn of Satan himself.
Before my lips even became acquainted with Satan’s elixir, I took a moment to observe it closely. What I found was that it is basically unappealing to all five senses.
The only way to describe the scent of this beer is that of the skunkiest marijuana you can find this side of Amsterdam. It looks like foamy five-day old raccoon piss, and it probably tastes worse than that. Swallowing it made my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, and the only thing worse than the taste of metal that engulfs your mouth was the aftertaste, which was akin to death. I may have preferred taking shots of gasoline.
Every sip made this brew worse, and it became a daunting task to even finish the pint that was placed before me. About 30 minutes after being served, half of this cup of magnificent death juice remained in front of me.
Michaela Pierce bartends at EBC and has known me for quite some time. She can attest that I am one to always finish the drink that is put in front of me. It’s somewhat of a point of pride. Failure to finish a fine beer, in my humble opinion, is alcohol abuse. I was unable to finish the entirety of this pint of Stainless Steel.
“You’re drinking this one real slow,” Pierce said, noting my struggles in consuming the beer.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I need to wait a minute or so to be reborn after each sip, because every time I die a little more inside.”
It was that bad. I’m not kidding. In all honesty, the only time you should bother ordering this is in the event that you want to make more bad choices than usual, or if you’re in the mood for atypical levels of self-loathing.
EBC’s in-house definition of Stainless Steel is seemingly harmless. The brewery describes it as an “American IPA with a traditional pale malt & an aggressive hop profile.”
An aggressive hop profile is an understatement. This stuff beat the crap out of my will to live with every taste and had more hops than LeBron James. The international bitterness unit (IBU) level on this bad boy is 77, and its alcohol by volume content is a cool seven percent. If you have sandpaper taste buds and a garbage disposal for a stomach, it has the potential to get you real messed up real quick. For the rest of us mere mortals, look somewhere else to get your buzz going.
As for all IPAs, the jig is up. Stop pretending that you like this stuff, please. Do it for me. Do it for yourself. There’s nothing cool about ordering something so awful and so expensive in lieu of ordering something delicious like Blueberry Wheat or Fall Fest. You aren’t cool. You aren’t boujee. You’re just a pretentious douche. IPAs are only the best at doing one thing, and that is being the worst.
Rating: 1.0/5
Verdict: You should only order this in order to throw it in the garbage. This will prevent others from being exposed to how heinous this stuff really is.
