Bells Big Head San Diego Style Ale

Formerly brewed at Bells Brewery
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Kalamazoo, Michigan USA

bottle, at Carolina Crew get together, provided by mrfacto. Great aroma, Fruity, apricot, peach, orange. Classic orange copper color, Good head & lacing. Bitter flavor, quite the contrast from the aroma, turns grassy grapefruity. even kind of amonia like. Think body, oily creamy mouthfeel, bitter finsh. Very good brew. though the flavor turn was dissapointing after the aroma. Could sniff this one all day.

(12oz bottle, thanks ryan) Medium off-white head atop lightly hazed, light amber body. Aroma is moderately sweet, juicy grapefruit, mango, some hay, bread, yeasty. Taste is moderately sweet, pine/hay, grapefruit, yeast. Very bitter. Sticky full body. Not as "bright" as Hopslam, and not nearly as enjoyable.

Nice amber color with a white head that retains very well and leaves tons of sticky lacing. Aroma has grapefruit, tangerines, pine cones, and sap. Very piney flavors, resinous, but lacks some of the other flavors noticed in the nose. A rather bitter beer, but still quite good. Higher carbonation and medium body with a sticky hop finish. An enjoyable beer for sure, and I’m glad to have tried it, but I like HopSlam better. Thanks to hoppymeal for the bottle!

Batch # 8369. Received in a trade with moejuck. A bit suprised at how inferior this was to Hopslam. Perhaps it was a bad bottle. Maybe it had a rough journey. But the consensus amongst those who tasted it was that it was either below average or just slightly above. There were some issues I had with the beer (aroma being oxidized) and the flavor (missing some of that hard-core WC hop blast of bitter goodness) but on the whole it wasn’t bad.

The beer poured out a dark amber color with a two-finger thick head. Aroma is one-two pine/citrus hop punch, but the lingering wet paper was too hard to ignore. The hop flavor, as I mentioned, just didn’t have that "wow" factor like Hopsickle, Pliney, White Knuckle and many other WC DIPA’s. It also had a subtle spiciness to it, which was nice. A bit too much alcohol for me too. Not bad, but hardly a WC DIPA. Hopslam was much better.

Thanks to Facto for bringing this to the Carolina Gathering. Pours a nice golden brew with a yellow head. The nose is simply fantastic. Extremely hoppy, fruity, citrusy, apricots, oranges, grapefruit, very very pungent. The flavor is very rich and citrusy, has more hop bitterness and waxyness than I would like, less resinous hop flavor. Definitely some grapefruit peel in the flavor and aroma. Very rich and waxy mouthfeel, would have liked more hop flavor than bitterness but still very special.

Made a trade at DLD. Amber color. Smell of hops, caramel, malt, grapefruit, pine, spice and citrus zest. Taste of pine, malt, hops, grapefruit, caramel, orange zest and some minor alcohol. What a great DIPA. Thanks who ever traded me those 4 bottles.

Bottle shared by mfacto at the CC gathering. I think he got this from sliffy the day before. Thanks Matt and Dan! Pours a bright orange with a nice white head. Very bitter with citrus and piney flavors. Right on.

Very pleased to try this, courtesy of MrFacto, who brought it to the Carolina crew gathering at Turd’s place. Man, can Bells rock it or what? After establishing some incredibly distinctive and rocking IPAs of their own, they come up with a pitch perfect SD style DIPA. Huge floral aroma practically jerks you by the collar - and aubreya aptly pointed out that there’s a ton of apricot in there. As you get used to the aroma, you start to dig the pale orange body, the massive fluffy head. Sticky and gooey in places but still quite balanced. And after the fullness of it all, it’s got a long, pleasantly bitter finish. Awesome stuff.