Brewed By: Bell's Brewery, Inc. in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Purchased: 12oz bottle from a 6-pack bought at Piccadilly Beverage Shops in Urbana, IL; 2013
Style/ABV: Imperial IPA, 10.0%
Hooray! Hopslam! About Bell's:
Bell's Brewery is one of the biggest names in craft beer. Once you get past the Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, and Stone phase, you start hearing about breweries like Bell's. Bell's began as a home-brewing supply shop, founded by Larry Bell, back in 1983. Bell's sold its first beer in September 1985. The brewery has humble roots like many of the first craft breweries, and the beer was originally brewed in a 15-gallon soup kettle. The beer was originally self-distributed, bottled, and delivered by hand during the company's first four years. In 1993, Bell's became the first brewery in Michigan to open an onsite pub. The brewery currently has two facilities, one in Kalamazoo, and one in Comstock Township, Michigan.
In case you missed the hype boat, train, car, bus, ship, carrier, plane, or whatever....Hopslam is an annual seasonal release from Bells. Starting with six different hops, and then dry-hopped with Simcoe hops, the Hopslam features pungent grapefruit, stone fruit, and floral notes. This beer features a big malt bill, and also features honey, to provide additional sweetness and body to balance this beer out. Let's get this into a glass, and add our sloppy umpteenths to the Hopslam review pile.
The beers pours into a beautiful golden color, with hints of gold and orange. It has a slight thickness as you pour it, and the beer produces two finger's of white head (maybe a dash of gold in the head in low light). The head is nice and foamy at first, but quickly drops down into a centimeter of white foam, leaving mad lacing. This beer is just a touch hazy (chill haze? suspended proteins?), with mid-sized bubbles lazily popping upwards.
The aroma is ridiculously fresh and bright, with grapefruit, mango, pineapple, honey, some earthy strawberry/melon/peach; there's also some biscuity, honey, malt sweetness, with even a dash of cereal.
This one starts bitter up front, with a lot of pine, white grapefruit, hints of wood and rind, and some cereal/biscuit; I'm getting expansive tropical fruits and sweetness in the middle, including mango, pineapple, grapefruit, and hints of earthy/floral hops. The back end trails off with honey, biscuit, floral hops, and fade to a bittery pine finish. I'm getting a lot of honey-biscuit in this, and flashes of decadent tropical fruits.
This beer is sought after like diamonds mined by African children, but I'm not 100% sure I'm sold. There is a really nice honey-biscuit sweetness thing going on here, and it really opens up into decadent tropical fruits front and mid-palate. Palate depth is good, complexity is moderate, and drinkability is high for the style. At 10.0%, this isn't too sticky or bitter. I'd call this medium-full, with smooth and supportive carbonation. Up front is a blast of toffee sweetness, followed by pine, bitter, woody/rind, and more honey sweetness; the middle is sweet, biscuit, honey, toffee, sweeter hops like tropical fruits and grapefruit; the back fades to bitter hops, flashes of sweet tropical fruits, sticky/bitter finish that is very dry.
Rating: Above-Average
I'm feeling a Strong Above-Average on this, and I'm wondering if this recipe is variable from year to year. I'm happy to say this is a dynamite Imperial IPA, and something I would buy annually. As far as making my tits turn into machine guns or whatever, this isn't the tits. But it could just be me. I have two 6-packs of this to mull over...so I guess I'll get back with folks. For these sweeter IPAs, I like to pair them with anything cheap/American Meixcan food, or bar food. This beer would also go well with outdoor grilling, which is a DAMN SHAME for the Midwest. Come on, Bells.
Random Thought: Considering 6-packs of this stuff go for around...16-20 dollars...I don't know if I would go all out to obtain this. Then again, this is really solid stuff.
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