Well it was only a matter of time before this angry beast showed up. It is a top 100 beer that took me a while to land but once I did, the maltgina was never the same. Initially I traded a 2011 Black Tuesday for the 2008 Arctic Devil and people were clowning me like I bought a Better than Ezra T shirt, acting like i got all ripped off. The 2008 was gentle and caressing, but that makes for boring ass reviews, let’s look explicitly at the asshole version: 2011.
Running with the Devil.
A: This has a nice wateriness to it like the beginnings of a boozy Arnold Palmer. It has some ruby hues at the edges but the center is all business heavy malt. The wispy carbonation falls off faster than Aubrey O’ Day. There is no lacing and it’s a fairly spartan affair as far as appearances go, unlike Aubrey O’ Day.
If you kill an entire bottle of this to yourself, be prepared to look and sound like this.
S: Wow this beer takes you to the candyshop. There is a deep burnt caramel and sweet brown sugar like mammy just made some cream of wheat for you to mash on. Mama lets me lick the spoon.
T: The sweetness pokes its head out for a moment and imparts a molasses, maple, and toffee flavor that quickly ducks back into its hole for the malty winter that sets in. This maltverine knows how to dish out the bitter and the sweet concurrantly. That wasn’t a typo, there’s a nice hoppy dryness and a currant note to it as well, not infection, but in the tannic manner. I previously had a 2008 bottle of this and I am now scrapping that entire review because this beer is COMPLETELY different like in an Urkel vs. Stefan way. The 2008 way boring, muted, smooth, and predictable. I like this crazy, boozy, erratic Urkel version way more, there’s a lot more Jaleel White malt up in this bitch.
It's tough to accurately describe how good this is, so, here's some pics of iguanas in sexy poses.
M: There’s a nice oakiness to this beer that dries but at the same time presents a pulpit for the saccharine notes to preach from in a perfunctory manner. I can’t really focus on how the carbonation or coating is because this is such a complicated ass beer, just from typing this sentence some new banana esters starting rolling in as the beer warms and they are welcome. The booziness is a bit intense but it is welcome to separate the men from the bitchly wines. It’s funny that, for a beer called Arctic Devil, it actually tastes way worse at colder temperatures. They should call this lukewarm devil and people will be more on the rails for how to serve it.
Mmm well my devil certainly isn't Arctic.
D: Well, take all of this in the context of a 13.4% beer: this is amazingly drinkable. It is not like a hef on a hot summer day after you just got done beating your children for leaving the hose on, not that level of refreshment, but for the cold 65 degree winter I am suffering through right now, it hit the spot better than a run on sentence.
This tease in his tiny bed.
Narrative: Clayton was raised in suburban Ohio and always dreamed that his mediocre bar chords and major melody driven pop tunes would catapult him to the same fame that Hootie and the Blowfish once enjoyed. But a Darius Rucker he was not and reality set in, in the particular Ohio way wherein he informed all his friends that he was going to make it in Los Angeles. Spoiler alert: his accoustic guitar was not on par with Puddle of Mudd and therefore, in the strict hierarchy or talent = success that is the music industry, he was resigned to work at Chili’s. Finally, in a night of desperation he left work after having a few too many hard Mango Ice Teas, and stumbled upon the Westwood streets, which was practically what they were designed for. In his moment of weakness an opaque badger appeared before Clayton. “Are you my spirit animal?” he muttered through the smell of cheap gin. “Clayton, long have I waited for this moment of desperation, your place is amongst the caribou in the upper reaches of this planet,” the badger noted remonstratively. “But why snow badger, on those times when I needed you most I saw only 2 sets of pawprints in the snow?” “You see Clayton, it was those times when you drank 4loko and were the most wasted, that I carried you.” Clayton nodded and knew that frostmourne hungered for arctic adventures. The Anchorage police retrieved his body from a Mitsubishi Mirage just weeks later and the autopsy report unprofessionally noted the cause of death as “Suicide, kinda?…X-D”
dontdrinkbeer 