Bells Big Head San Diego Style Ale

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

Dense dark honey golden color with a thick head. Very strong hop filled aroma. Sweet sticky bitter slightly untamed flavor. Hopslam tastes a bit more refined.

Pours dark amber in color with a nice quarter inch of frothy head.
Smell is big ’ol funky hops. However I believe it may be too much Simcoe. I’m finally getting hints of the catbox that everybody refers to often. Taste is bitter and full. This is a huge beer that hits you like a ton of bricks. Good beer, but I’ll stick with HopSlam.

12oz bottle. recently bottled. big thanks to the big head holdenn for this one. pours hazy golden with creamy off white head. nose has citrus, piney, grapefruit, and perfumy hop notes. flavors are sweet caramel, bruisingly bitter, like drinking grapefruit juice, orange, harsh sweet alcohol finish and very sugary. way way over the top yet done well for what it is. its just too much for me to even enjoy 6oz of. I could see how I could rate a few ounces of this very well but it just becomes way too sweet, bitter, and boozy to enjoy much of.

Many thanks to BarrelAged for bringing this to the Flossmoor Pre-DLD party (and to Dan and Steve for bottles)! Poured transparent coppery-amber with a short cap of white head. The aroma was very juicy with pears, grapefruit, and pine well represented.. sweet, very fragrant, and dangerously approachable. The flavor was also strong with juicy pineapple, grapefruit, and a little bubblegum.. finished with more pine and citrus bitterness.. stuck around for quite a while after the drink. Huge, but somehow well-balanced on the palate.. warm and juicy. Fantastic!

Sample courtesy of Sliffy. Thanks dude!
Pours golden yellowish and is mostly clear. Smell is bursting out of the glass even with a smallish sample. Smell is piney, citrusy strong fragrant hops. Taste is citrus rind, pineyness and the alcohol didn’t make itself known to me from my sample which was a bit surprising. Will definitely rerate when I get a full bottle, but this was very promising and nice.

Sampled from 12-oz bottle at Dark Lord Days 2008. Pours a clear golden yellow brew with a thick and long lasting off-white head that has good lacing in the glass. Aroma of sweet grapefruit, pineapple, some cotton candy and light caramel malt. Taste is medium to full bodied, some carbonation with flavors of sweet caramel, grapefruit juice and zest, a touch of lime, and some alcohol presence. Not as over the top grapefruit bitterness as Hopslam but has a decent sweet grapefruit bitterness that lingers around after the finish. The alcohol warmth is a nice touch to make this most memorable.

Bottle pours a clear dark golden color with a off white head. Head lasts a long time. Smells like alcohol, grass, and some citrus. Has a medium to heavy mouthfeel that leads to a caramel sweet taste upfront. That leads to a sticky feel with flavors of grass and grapefruit combining to make an interesting flavor in my mouth. Finish seems to blend all of these flavors together. Overall this beer was just a decent brew. I like hopslam a lot better. And it wasn’t as over the top as I thought it would be given the reviews so far. I enjoyed this beer. I just think its been over hyped.

12oz bottle @ Bell’s. Gorgeous pour: bold, deep golden-yellow color; thick, textured head with great retention and lacing that lasts forever; pictures on the side of the glass. Loads of resiny, earthy (mostly) and citrus hops in the aroma; some chewy, sugary malt character underneath. Full, impressively dense mouthfeel: loads of biting earthy and citrus hops, warming alcohol (no secrets here), and chewy, slightly astringent bitterness; sugar, earthiness, and some caramel and citrus at the core; generous, but just a touch messy and rough. Lengthy, bitter finish: earthiness, citrus, and sugar; some warmth.