Category Archives: double ipa

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Bell’s Hopslam, Someone Went and Slammed All My Hops and Dreams.

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I have had this beer twice. Once I raped myself (beersturbation) bought one for $20 off ebay and it was 6 months old. That was hardly a fair tick, so I decided to trade for a new one, 2 weeks old and compare. The result is an ultra legit review.

I prefer my hops in a submission hold, but the hopslam is an excellent move as well.

Bells’ Hopslam DIPA, 10% abv

A: Mildly opaque golden hues, brighter and more apricot than most DIPAs and it doesn’t look exceptionally malty. Nice thick white cumulus head with huge thick lacing. It has a great look to it and you just want to bump some Ronettes and ask this beer why it wont be your little hop baby.

Everyone always talks about how the preivous year of Hopslam was better. It's a pretty solid beer but why they hatin?

S: Huge sweet hoppy character that comes off extremely saccharine and herbal. The hop cloud is like an olfactory bomb you can smell 18” away. It is vegetal in the end and a bit too herbal for my citrusy nose, but to each his own I guess.

T: There is an initial huge sweetness that isn’t exactly citrus, it tastes more funnel cake/cinnabon, then the herbal and lime flavors initiate into a great bouquet. The finish is a huge spinach and pine blast that just pangs of salad and fresh greens. It isn’t what I am seeking in a DIPA, but it is by no means offputting, again just different. I am not being a homer on this, my favorite IPAs are made in Vermont, it just isn’t for me.

Well well well, another ultra hopped beer you say? I'm listening...

M: For a beer this big it is incredibly drinkable. The mouthfeel isn’t overly coating or exceptionally filling, but the flavors are relentless. I want to drain my glass with increasing celerity ::pushes glasses up nose:: The coating is a sweet little mixed greens salad ninja. Staying on the greenest greens call this beer a vegetarian. All you smell is strange clouds.

D: This is incredibly drinkable and I would say that the ABV places it in leagues with several different classes of beers. This will warm you in the winter or cool you off with awesome refreshing sweet notes in the summer. Just fantastic all around; even with a bit of age it is still an impressor. It is much better fresh but again the lack of juicy childlike citrus puts it down a notch in my esteem but I can see why people who dont have access to fresh Pliny all the time would be all jazzed up about this.

Bells beer feels more inherently partiotic or american to me, something about the craftsmanship or the fact that it gets you excessively wasted. God bless the midwest.

Narrative: Sure, it wasn’t the WWE, but the triple title, welter weight tristate professional wrestling competition was nothing to sneeze at. The competitions behind the Tastee Freeze lacked the ambiance of a pure demonstrative environment for the masses, but the hum of the generator provided a mild lull for the public lacking dental insurance. A dim spotlight, spotlight loosely being referred to as a Belkin floodlight, shined furiously on the center of the canvas ring. A 9 year old girl swayed gently on the ropes awaiting the entrances. The smell of cut grass and grapefruit began to fill the baleful air, the mist of sticky herbal sweetness lingering within each patrons’ nose: Hopundertakehopper had arrived. He burst through the back bus room door and performed his classic flying maneuver, whose name needs no recitation at this juncture.

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Alpine Brewing Company, Pure Hoppiness, For When Hoppy Birthday isn’t enough, but Exponential Hoppiness is Too Much

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More plugs for Alpine brewing this week and another amazing DIPA that is frustratingly hard to find these days. Used to be you could walk into a Whole Foods, give Fabio a high five and pick up a couple bottles of this. Now people on the east coast have a thirst for unbalanced hops and OUR HOP ECONOMY IS IN SHAMBLES.

Double that IPA, get that PUR h0p1n3$$ shyt g0i1n

Alpine Brewing, Pure Hoppiness, 8% abv, double IPA

A: Nice deep gold tones, great cabonation, spider webbing from the lacing with no middle carbonation. Looks like discontent apple juice. Apples that be all pissed and frothy.

The purity of the hops will reincarnate your soul.

S: Huge bouquet from a mile away, great citrus but pine and forest predominates. I love that Alpine is almost always, well Alpine. The smell is a fantastic balance between the juiciness of most DIPAs and the herbal notes from malty Imperial IPAs. IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHEN TO START WANTING IT, NOW IS A GOOD TIME.

T: Awesome hybrid of initial notes, there’s a tinge of herbal mixed with citrus. The citrus ends up riding out the party and the drying forest finish is present in the swallow. All around a great melange of the two styles. It feels like if Pliny and Maharaja had a love child. This would be the result and unsurprisingly, it is delicious. But that would never happen, most historical pundits believe Pliny the Elders homose- alas I digress.

Get all carried away with that hop blast and you forget about the 8% abv and you be all lookin like dis.

M: The mouthfeel is light with creamy coating. Great carbonation boosts the hops into the nostrils creating a create hop profile. Great maltiness that is not overdone. It’s a hot tub of hop oils all up in my bubbling mouthhole and THE BOTTOMS ARE COMING OFF.

D: This beer is really high on this note. The expansive character spread hop stickiness like a virus and your mouth is the better for it. The abv is hidden well and you could drink this in plenty of circumstances from grooming your dog, spot welding, watching past episodes of Burn Notice. The choices are endless.

You know it is the middle child, but you respect it nonetheless, interesting and good at science or whatever middle children are good at, not the baby, not the one who gets pregnant first. I am ok with that.

Narrative: The year was 2145, but that seems like just yesterday, well since they harnessed the photon retractor, everything seems like the yesterday of tomorrow. Let me explain. Corporal William Herboreal had been working as the ships botanist on an experimental mission to Titan, one of the outer moons of, well that’s not important. Upon discovering a new strain of humulus lupus, an advanced strain of hops, the oil was potent enough to power the ship, too powerful even. We cascade through time and sheered the space barrier in a way that even Immanuel Kant couldn’t’ have predicted. THE HOPS WERE TOO INTEGRATED. He kept feeding hops to the engine, its juniper rancor filling the cabin. But now we have crossed the line, fallen through time, living in the land of the hops. Yes we are living in the land of the hops.

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Three Floyd’s Dreadnaught, Double IPA, Maybe She Wont, but then Again Maybe She Wiiiiilllllllll-

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She dreads me. She Dreadsmenaught. But then again maybe she wiiiillll....

Dreadnaught IPA, Three Floyds, 9.5% abv

A: It has a bright cloudy tangerine and orange haziness to it, lots of foam with huge carbonation. The lacing is thin but the whole presentation is great. It is a top 100 gem and I want to to be not as good as it is, but damnit, it’s another non-California DIPA that just owns.

Three Floyd's. I li....I liii-....ILIKEYOUALUT.

S: It reeks of huge grapefruit and tangelo notes, some mild orange rind dryness, and almost zero herbal aspects to it. I have given this to sceptical west coast friends and after their facial reconstructions from hop assault, they were into it. Albeit horribly scarred.

T: The taste almost directly mirrors the smell, which is surprisingly rare in IPAs this big and complex. It has that great juiciness of Sculpin, orange notes, a strange tartness similar to grapefruit or unripe tangerines. This is incredibly refreshing and the abv sneaks in like a Trojan horse. THAT’S NOT THE ONLY TROJAN THAT SNEAKS IN IN THE MIDWES- just kidding they don’t use birth control, you’ve seen their kids right? Ok cool.

You think its just gonna be a standard balanced IPA affair, then it rolls all hard on your bitchass.

M: The mouthfeel is a bit bigger than the standard DIPA but it doesn’t toe into that disappointing maharaja range with excessive coating and chewing. This beer has an exceptional balance, but then beats your ass with hop cones. A strange note that needs commenting upon is how good the bubbles feel. They somehow hit an exceptional attenuation/carbonation level. Three Floyds consistently delivers exceptional products and this one delivers. Not trying to sound all tough, FINE I LIKE THE BUBBLES OK.

D: This is clearly exceptionally drinkable but the lack of availability, price point, and high-ish abv seems to draw away from the universal applicability of this beer. It is a world class but it as far as the epic DIPA class goes it is certainly not best in show. Overall, a great beer and the Midwest has a viable answer to the west coast giants.

Another DIPA that doesn't make distribution to California, what a tease.

Narratives: Shire Grassmuggins was not an exceptional piece of feudalism. It got exceptional amounts of rain and had incredible turnip yields, given the time and labor constrictions. Serfdom never exactly produced the most diligent workers, but, as far as 13th century economies went, Grassmuggins was a solid performer in a bull market. The workers were diligent and took religious holidays often, but the field was almost conscious of its need for crop rotation. The crude tools yielded amazing produce but the soil called out for minor improvements. The wind through the reeds seemed to scream to the peasants for basic nitrates through fertilization. Alas, this shire must let its latent glory remain unknown to other regio

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Alpine Bad Boy, All Those Naughty Oily Hops All Foamy and NSFW

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Well, the top 100 beer rampage continues, because I am in the Christmas spirit and sharing good reviews is so much more fun than sharing reviews that are all halla sorry. This is not bottled and getting a growler of it is time consuming and not fun, drinking it is the exact opposite.

This Alpine has been a very very Bad Boy. Pay $3.99 a minute to listen to it get op-

Alpine Bad Boy, 9.5% abv, Double IPA

A: This has a radiant golden glow to it with a great clarity like majestic apple juice. The lacing looks like an abandoned haunted house and these a tons of webs all up in this piece. This be looking mad antiquated. The carbonation from the growler is solid and sticky throughout. This looks dangerous and somehow sessionable. First order of business, smooooothe flavorrr.

The hop cone, while related to marijuana, will not show up on urine tests. Rest assured.

S: The smell even on opening the growler is relentless. The hop presence detonates like pinecones galvanized all up in your dome piece. There is a grassy pineapple to it with some herbal grapefruit. I would deem this 60/40 herbal to fruit which is a solid balance. Hop Wallop needs to take some notes. This has more balance than a Chinese gymnast with an inner ear infection.

T: This is exactly what Alpine does so. Damn. Well. It just delivers a huge initial sweetness that fades into a freshly cut grassiness that makes you feel all elementary school for a second until, bam, honey sweetness that fades. This is like the more tactful version of Hopslam. A friend you can confide secrets in, a hoppy buddy you can take places and know he wont talk about when someone touched your no no. That kind of friend.

I want to be friends with this beer, but I am pretty sure it would ruin my shit if we hung out on a regular basis.

M: The mouthfeel is impossibly light. It is Pale Ale thin, imparts a huge herbal character that swirls a maple cape and fades into a loveable sweet note. It is David Blaine ass hop work. It leaves my mouth all astounded but wanting more. I suppose a growler is both an appropriate and inappropriate serving size, for obvious reasons. This will take a serious prestige amongst Ephraim and Citra. To be clear, this is far superior to Exponential Hoppiness in the way that Nightcrawler is superior to Colossus. It is just someone I would rather hang out with on a regular basis. This is nimble and bad ass, not some lumbering asshole who always asks you to save his sister from a tractor.

D: Holy jeez, this is the Live Oak of DIPA’s which is to say its drink ability is off the charts for the ABV and the complex character of the hop profile. I almost want to run my own tests to ascertain if this has any more than 4% abv but, the old liver test is sufficient. The fact that this is not in bottles has allegedly saved CalTrans millions in roadside clean ups. So there’s always that.

You make assumptions at first, but then it turns into a surprisingly refined experience.

Narrative: “Well? Did you find anything? All OF THE OPENINGS ARE SEALED!” Tarynn cried with the utmost agitation, Mark felt that a reference to that’s what she said would be inapropos in the case of a spelunking disaster. “WE ARE GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE!” Tarynn exclaimed while running her fingers through her thinning hair. She fell to her knees in desperation and clutched the halogen lantern desperately. “We can’t below the water table, so therefore, the sediment should push up some sustainable filtered water and, potentially some veget-” Mark tripped over a thick tuft of underground foliage. “What in the-” he discontinued his sentence in that staccato manner that characters in situation comedies do, despite not being interrupted. “HECK” he finished, but so much later that it didn’t seem canon with his previous sentence. “What is it Mark?” Tarynn called out. There was a fresh pool of water seeping through the floor but it was fully entwined by sticky, vinuous hop plants. The smell was overwhelming. “This-” he did it again, “is our only chance of survival.” The two nodded gravely and began to suck from the pools the sticky water and push raw hop flowers into their gullets. “If only we-” Mark declared before falling asleep. The geological team found them 8 days later, high out of their minds on raw hop flowers. Mark’s sentences have since been correc-