This particular Friday night, I was looking for something other than my typical Yuengling lager. I was about ready to pick up a heavy oatmeal stout (unseasonably cold right now for South Carolina) when a matte-finished, dual-tone green box caught my eye. The box has a utilitarian appearance and was tucked away in the very corner of the case. I couldn’t resist the magical three letters on the side: I – P – A.

New Belgium brewery has been making beers since 1991 out of Colorado, one of the craft-brew hotspots in America. Many might know them from their “Fat Tire” amber ale, which I often see here in Greenville on tap.

The Ranger IPA comes in at 6.5% ABV, in line with the style. It boasts 3 different hops: Cascade, Chinook and Simcoe (interestingly enough I typed this line after the one later mentioning Cascade hops). Chinook hops have an extremely high alpha acid level (bitterness), and have a delightfully spicy taste to them.

The beer pours with a perfect head and smells amazing. New Belgium claims a full pound of hops in every barrel, and the floral notes punch you in the face before your wet lips ever hit glass. I wonder if a full pound is a lot. . . .

Most of my IPA recipes call for roughly 4 oz. hops per 5-5.5 gal. batches. A keg of beer is a half-barrel and is roughly 7 gallons, making a full barrel roughly 14 gallons, or a little less than 3 home brewer batches. That means 16 oz. of hops in the Ranger to approximately 12 oz. in a typical IPA. That’s a lot of hops.

My initial taste is what I like out of an IPA. It’s floral, not fruity or citrus-like, like you can get from adding too much a single hop like Cascade. While hoppy, the beer is extremely well-balanced and has a great mouthfeel. Since IPAs do not have a lot of malt, they can tend to feel watery on the tongue. Like 2 salty balls, this beer sticks on my mouth and leaves a great aftetaste.

Unfortunately, every IPA that I taste gets ultimately to my favorite, Dogfish Head’s 90-min IPA. The Ranger sadly falls short of my hoppy datum; it also doesn’t match Delaware’s less-boiled 60-min IPA.

After my first, the 6.4% ABV kicks in my empty stomach, but one thing i find is that IPAs rarely give you an alcohol burn of off-taste, and neither does this one.

All in all, this is a very good IPA; I’m definitely not disappointed with my purchase.

For: hop-heads who want an ass-ton of hops in their beer; those who like well-balanced IPAs

Not For: those who prefer their IPAs more citrusy or grapefruit-like.

Rating: 7.5 / 10

Soak it up. This Cock has subordinates.

I won’t delve into it, but hopefully significantly less work will accompany this. This should hopefully mean more posts. I have tons of pics on my phone and cartoon ideas that I just haven’t had the time to do.

Bauss….

Is that what I. . . . ?

No, seriously, unless you own the university, this is just too much, braugh.

Oregon

The Ducks delivered another huge win Thursday night over a perennially-weak UCLA team. UCLA is currently ranked behind Notre Dame by math-whiz Jeff Sagarin, meaning this loss. . . is meaningless. In fact, Oregon’s schedule currently includes only a single win against a ranked team, albeit it was an impressive win against Stanford. If they win out against Arizona and Oregon State they deserve a National Championship shot.

Oklahoma

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ll know that OU was the third straight team to fall from the #1 spot. Looking at their schedule, sure they have good wins against Florida State and Texas, but. . . 7 pt victory against Utah State? 3 pt win against Air Force? This is not the resume of a #1 team. The jury is still out on Texas and Florida State in my opinion, too. To sum up,

They are. . . not. . .who we thought they were.

Missouri

Oh Jeff Sagarin. . . you have Missouri #1 in your ELO_CHESS, the ranking the BCS uses. They have wins over #1 Oklahoma who. . . see above. Aside from that, their best win is literally a 10 pt win against Illinois. That’s OK, you have a probable loss in Lincoln this coming week.

Notre Dame

They ARE, who we thought they were.

Ah, I love it.

Aurburn

OK, so Cam Newton sucks at passing, and the Tiger coaching staff has realized it. No longer are they even trying to throw. They’re Denard Robinson’ing it. As such, they’ve been dominate. Teams have realized over the last couple years that if you plan for the QB running, you get an extra blocker.

Their offense has been nearly unstoppable, and their defense has shown the ability to make enough stops.

Unfortunately, they play their last game against #7 Alabama, meaning they could both go 1-loss and get snubbed, despite a much “resume”.

Either way, I woke up with just an odd feeling in my left ball. It was…just uncomfortable. I was going to ignore it, so I proceeded to get ready for work. As I’m driving to work, one of my worst fears sets in: Testicular Torsion. Torsion occurs when one of the little guys rotates inside of the sack. This typically cuts off blood supply and the little dude dies usually within 6 hours. Now, it’s often associated with vomit-inducing pain, but not always. Was this a “minor” case of it? Only slightly twisted. When I was feeling around, it didn’t seem like they were parallel.

At this point, I start getting nervous, nervous to the point of nausea. I had to do something. I called a few Urologists, but they all said that if it could be torsion, that I needed to go to the ER. Fuck me.

So, I went in. Usually when I pay someone to fondle my balls, it’s fairly cheap and only takes an hour or so. This whole process took 6 hours! Holy shit man. Didn’t even get to enjoy my day off of work. I had to get an ultrasound to confirm, and hours later: hydrocele.

Basically, it’s a small liquid sack, in my individual ballsack, of course located inside of the main ball sack. Yea, apparently there are several mini-sacks for each nut. Either way, the pocket of liquid was causing swelling, which is what caused the slight discomfort and the “misalignment”.

It’s something that I need to follow up with a Urologist, but that can wait until I have some insurance. What a day.