Saturday, April 17, 2010

Hopped-Up on Goofballs

"6½ kilogram of alpha-acid extract was used og 10 kilograms of simcoe-pellets per 1000 liters beer". That's how Mikkeller technically describes their new beer, 1000 IBU, in their quaint Danish/metric way. But I prefer the term in this post's title, one my grandmother used to use to describe me and my cousin when we were especially rowdy. Mikkeller's new experiment into hop madness has a theoretical 1000 IBUs, almost ten times the amount that beers like Mean Manilishi, Unearthly, and Hopsickle contain (three of the highest IBU beers I had ever tried). Of course, there is all kinds of evidence that the human palate can only detect a certain number of IBUs, somewhere around 100. So this beer may be gimmicky, but it is fun anyway. And not as bitter as I would have expected, as there is a lot of sweet, almost honey-ish malt that is present but never interfering with the hop bitterness. At $12.99, the price is high for a beer that is only 12.7 oz. But you gotta be able to brag about trying a beer with 1000 IBUs, right? What's that? Nobody thinks that makes you cool? Well, I always think you're cool, 1000 IBUs or not. But you're cooler if you go to Jubilation and buy this beer.

No comments: