Bells Hopslam

Brewed by Bells Brewery
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Kalamazoo, Michigan USA

Bottle shared with tupalev, blankboy, HogTownHarry & jerc - jerc’s bottle. Deep golden-amber with a small white head. Aroma - hoppy as all hell (grapefruit, spruce) with quite sweet as well. Flavour of big, fresh hops, some honey and caramel - huge, but balanced. Just fantastic all around.

12oz bottle pours amber with a nice fluffy offwhite head that faded pretty quickly.. Good aroma of tropical fruits.. Grapefruit, pineapple, mango, some pine there as well. Flavor is grapefruit, pineapple, mango, and some good caramel malts behind it. Smooth full bodied and easy to drink.. Nice bitter finish.. Quite balanced.. Alcohol covered well. This one is dangerously easy to drink and amazingly tasty.. I’ve been looking forward to this and I wasn’t disappointed

12oz bottle, courtesy of Monger. Thanks, James! Pours an attractive, cloudy pink-grapefruit color; whitish head with decent retention and lacing. Fantastic, dank citrus aroma: tons of grapefruit, mango, and lemony hops with a touch of tartness; mouthwatering, to say the least. Excellent balance in the mouthfeel: plenty of citrus and piney hops, dank and juicy, hints of tangerine, backed by a solid malt backbone (suggesting maple syrup and sugar). Light piney bitterness and dryness at the end. One of the best IIPAs I’ve had.

Bottled October 2006, Sampled December 2006
Pours with a touch of yeast dustiness, but the beer is a lightly reddish hued, amber to copper color. It is topped by a frothy, almost two-finger thick, light tan colored head. The aroma is certainly quite hoppy; it is a mix of citrus, pine and even a more dank hop note similar to onions or perhaps even garlic. The hop aromatics are certainly an interesting mix. The predominant character is that of audaciously vibrant sweet citrus and exotic fruit aromas; notes of apricots, lychee, pineapple, candied orange peel, concentrated ruby-red-grapefruit, and other tropical fruit notes make up the dominant notes. Behind the upfront hop fruit though is a touch of more raw hop character; hints of pine, menthol and that onion-like almost garlic character lurk in the back ground, just enough to add a hint of complexity. Where is the malt? I couldn’t tell you underneath all of the hops.

The taste is sweet with the fruity hop notes, in fact the sweet fruitiness just sticks around clinging to the palate even after the beer has left my mouth. The hop fruit notes are much the same as I noticed in the aroma, but here there is a touch of biting bitterness to add a touch of balance. You know it is a hop focused beer, when you need hop bitterness to balance other hop derived notes. The malt is buried here, playing only a supporting role, there is certainly enough malt to not allow the hops to be dominating and raw, but definitely not enough more my hop flagellated taste buds to notice. It has just enough mouthfeel / palate coating ability to help the dominant hop character along; I wouldn’t say that this was a beer you wanted to pound, but it is dangerously quaffable.

The hop character here is so smooth & even soft (despite being amped up and loud overall); the brewer definitely took a heavy handed approach with smooth fruity hops like Simcoe and Amarillo when brewing this beer. The flavor does not have much, if anything, noticeable of the onion / garlic note that I experienced in the aroma, though perhaps there is a touch of it in the finish. Really the finish is dominated by a smooth, lingering bitterness that perhaps takes on a touch of mentholated pine. I really am a sucker for these smoothly fruity, over the top, one dimensional hop bombs. This is quite bitter, though I don’t necessarily realize it most of the time. This is totally only comprises one dimension of the usual three that a beer can have (hop, malt and yeast), but it is so enjoyable in its expression of the hop.

Bottle from JCapriotti. Thanks! Pours a decent amber with dense shading and a slight head. Little lacing to speak of in the glass. Aroma is an assault of grapefruit, pine, and orange; hints of peach and strawberry as well, but they never become the focus of your olfactory center. Woah! THIS is what an IPA should be: a biting, unrepentive, ruthless and downright brutal slam of grapefruit, pine, orange, and floral hops on the tongue. This beer kicks your butt AND steals your lunch money AND impregnates your girlfriend. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for gluttons of punishment.

Bottle from Wine Warehouse in Charlottesville. Pours copper color with very thin head. Aroma is like sticking your nose is a handful of fresh hops. Overpowering in a good way with a sweetness lingering just offstage. Taste is complex and amazing. Hops... sweet... hops again... then citrusy sweetness. I tend to write off IPAs, as they all tend to seem pretty much the same to me, but this one is amazing.

Rerate: On my third straight Hopslam tonight and it burns. It burns! And it’s so good. Yes!

Conspiracy theory: every year I forget to rate this beer, every year I wonder where all of my tax return money went; empty case boxes in my garage, hmmmmmm. Light golden color, short head, great lacing. Enticing fresh hoppy sweet citrus aroma, an amped up two-hearted with bonus grapefruit. Super thick and smooth palate. Starts off with a hit of bitterness and sweet malts (I think they put honey on the label just to confuse us), every sip ends dry with a bit of sugar sprinkled grapefruit. Yum.

Bottle from Styles again, wow, what a guy! This thing was a great pour, huge almost pure white head, lots of splotchy lacing, solid retention. The aroma was all citrus grapefruits, slight floral notes in the background. The flavor was full hop-mouth of citrus, some floral, even a bit of piney resinous notes. Full bodied malt support underneath (crystal malts?), some caramel but not very strong malt flavors. The mouthfeel was full and hearty, very nicely done! Thanks, Chris, I can’t give you enough props for that last trade!