Bells Hopslam

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

Bottle. Strong resin and grapefruit nose, light flowers and fruitiness, very inviting. Clear orange pour with a huge creamy / foamy / lacy head. Strongly bitter hop juice, resin and hops, delicious sticky hoppy aftertaste. Oily full palate. Distilled buds, I say! Extreme and perfectly to style, yet repeatable - I could have two of these every night. ... Also, double-take on seeing masterfully-hidden alcohol pct. - seriously, my eyes bugged, I couldn’t be convinced this had 9.5%

Having tried a year-old bottle last week and followed it up with the really fresh stuff [8283], I’m a re-dedicated fan - one of the drinkable doubles.

On tap at the Eccentric Cafe. This is a beer for hopheads and it was inevitable considering the popularity of both this "extreme" style and the brewer’s regular IPA, Two-Hearted Ale. While most I2PAs follow the tried-and true grapefruit/pine balanced by caramely malt formula, this example is unique and extraordinary. Hopslam was served in a snifter/tulip and had an unusually opaque peach/orange color, topped by a thin-medium off-white head. The aroma first caught my attention- strong pineapple, pepper, and fruit juice. The flavor is marked by abundant pineapple (including a bit of acidity), pepper, resin, and sweet, fruity malt. Extremely creamy and potent, Hopslam finishes with a nice bitterness and a touch of alcohol. I suspect Centennial hops dominate the hop bill if they don’t have exclusive reign. In fact, this seems like an amped-up version of Two-Hearted Ale, already a great beer. Picture Two-Hearted Ale with more intense fruity, citrusy, perfumey flavors and a creamier, thicker body. This beer is a hophead’s dream and ranks up there with Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA and Three Floyds Dreadnaught IPA on my list. I can’t say I’ve had any beer quite like it. Outstanding.

bottle, batch 8913, honey colored pour with decent off white fading head, aromas of grapefruit and girl scout cookies, flavors of bitter resiny, sour grapefuit with a sweetly pineapple finish, well done

Bottle. Batch 7690. Hazy white-yellow body with a small white ring of head. Sharp, fresh, and raw piney aroma that also has a hit of creamy cookie maltiness. Pungent/potent raw grapefruit hops. Very crisp and tasty to no end. Grassy alcohol grain with a long resiny finish. Awesome.

Well, the name does indicate what you get. Shiney golden color with a short lived white head that left some sticky lace. The nose does not wait for you to sniff it to make itself known. Huge pungent hop nose of pine and resin. If you like hops, you will like this beer. The alcohol is well hidden under all the flavor. Grapefruit rind, candied orange peel, pineapple, resin, apricot all explode on a stage of enough caramel sweetness and malts to support them, but just barely. This is a huge beer, and I think it did in fact bruise my tongue, but it is a solid example of this extreme style.

Bottle at RB gathering. Light hazy golden in color with a little head. Hoppy musty aroma. Citrusy piney hops. Hoppy malty flavor. Citrusy grapefruity notes. Finish is sticky and bitter. Full bodied. Well balanced beer. Very nice beer. Very drinkable.

Unfiltered peach in color. Thin but fully sustained pure-white foam. Hefty hop aromas of cantaloupe, tangerine, mango, and pinesap. Sharp hints of green onion. Delicate honeyed malt sweetness. Vivacious bottle-conditioned carbonation expands on the palate. Body is dense and oily from the get-go, with not a whole lot of brightness to go along with it. Quickly becomes astringently syrupy and borderline cloying, due to the concentration of resinous hops. Sweetness wanes slowly as there’s just enough acidity to lift some of the sappy weight. Crisp, crackery malts generate some cleanliness by imparting a dusty dryness along with fluffy touches of fresh biscuits, as do fresh mangoes and some shimmering citrus qualities, but an unpleasant sweetness and sogginess persists. Finishes remarkably balanced, with plenty of succulent hop flavors gently caressing then deflecting the spicy and grassy hops. Soggy/overripe tangerine notes increase at higher temperatures, but the mango remains relentless and salvages some of the essential brightness. Overall, the aroma could use a bit more cleanliness and more hoppy brightness. The flavor is also on the sweet side, which causes the hops to come across as being slightly muddled. And with the exception of some chewy yeast and slightly tacky textures, the level of attenuation is so close to perfection...just not quite there. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but very close. A few very-minor adjustments would make this a real standout. A solid effort from a great brewery.

Very nice! And a good example of how a beer can be big on hops and still leave room for malt to do its thing. The aroma was generally dominated by citric hops: orange rind, lemon rind, and grapefruit juice, and then a touch of doughy biscuity malt in the background. The flavor equally hoppy, it was a spicy resiny sort of hoppiness, with a mangoish level of fruitiness. Again, malt was there like biscuits or sugar cookies, providing plenty of rounded oomph to fill out the palate. Golden colored with a nice full creamy head.

Draft @ redlight. Woot woot!! That’s some stinky dank hop aroma!! Oh it makes me feel so good. Piney resiny grapefruit and dank cannabis. This is some deep hop aroma. Faded copper color, poured with minimal head. I don’t even want to drink it, jsut sniff it. But of course I’m going to drink it and I don’t even know where to begin. I get a big grapefruit citrus plus white grapes and cantaloupe or honeydew. Lingering resinous hops are sweaty and citric with a lemon-lime rind, the longer lingering fruit is honeydew rind. Malts? Oh shit I almost forgot about malts! ummm, bready with a syrupy caramel sauce but they’re not heavy. Not so much a backbone to the hops but a torso. Not a headless limbless torso but simple nonetheless. What the hell am I talking about?! I think metaphors have gone out the window of a speeding pickup truck. Make that a big truck with rust around the wheel wells. Back to the beer, the hops get puckering in the citrusickness. This beer just made me make up a word. This beer might also cause dissociative disorder. I’m not even halway through my pint. I think I’m fucked. Woooooooooy. From a distance (what distance?) I think there’s some kind of candy-caramel nearby. I’ve lost my ability to manipulate a writing instrument. That means pen. There’s a girl at the bar that looks like a young Linda Rondstadt circa 1968, and she’s just ordered a pint of this stuff. A beer geek couldn’t hardly ask for a better infatuation. (numbers are up from 4.1 for the bottle to 4.5 for the draft)