This week in CBX: Quadruple beer rainbow, but what does it mean?

Image by Flickr user pink_fish13

Remember when the Charleston Beer Exchange brigade only had one rare beer event each week?  Those days are obviously long gone, as for a third week in a row they are bringing you Rare Beer Tuesday (double this time), Rare Bomber Thursday, and cask ale on Saturday.

5 p.m. on Tuesday will see two new brews hit the growler station.  2XIPA, from Lakewood, NY's Southern Tier Brewing, straddles the line between IPA and Double IPA with its ABV of 8.3%.  While the beer might be scared of style commitment, it should deliver in the hops department.  It earns an A- from BeerAdvocate and a 96 from Ratebeer.  

For your simultaneous pleasure, John John Hazelnut from Rogue Ales will also be up for grabs.  We've written about this beer series before, wherein a Rogue Ale is aged in a Rogue Spirits barrel for an incestuous final product (in a good, non-Deliverance way).  This time the base beer is Hazelnut Brown Nectar, which is aged in Hazelnut Spiced Rum barrels.  (5% ABV, B, 83)

Rare Bomber Thursday this week introduces you to a super-limited, draft-only member of New Belgium Brewing's Lips of Faith line - Fall Wild Ale (8.5% ABV, B, 94).  The commercial description does this more justice than I can:

Fall Wild Ale, our mahogany-hued autumn ale spiced with schisandra, opens with the floral, earthy notes of fall itself. Schisandra berries, known as "five flavor fruit," possess a panoply of flavors . This malt-forward dubbel ale is fermented with a Trappist yeast and finishes dry and slightly sour from a touch of bretta. 

Bringing up the rear is a vicious firkin of dry-hopped Ruination IPA from Stone Brewing out of Escondido, CA.  Every bottle of Stone beer has a humorous essay printed onto the back, with Ruination famously claiming to ruin your palate due to its extreme hop bitterness (rated at over 100 IBUs).  Naturally, the next step is to dry hop this hop bomb with Chinook and Centennial hops.  Your palate may never recover, so consider a living will before proceeding.  (7.7% ABV, A, 100)

Charleston Beer Exchange meets your needs at 14 Exchange Street downtown.

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