Great Divide Hercules Double IPA

Brewed by Great Divide Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Denver, Colorado USA

22oz bottle - Pours a beautiful copper copper transparent color with an offwhite rocky head as big as the mountain on the bottle. The head lingers and laces all the way down the glass. Beautiful. Probably the best looking IIPA I’ve seen yet. Aroma is grapefruit, pine cones and sunkist oranges. The flavor is some good sweet orangelike citrus flavors upfront backed up and blended quite well with some nice caramel malts which quickly and crisply end with a nice bitter smack in the face to finish off each sip. This one is good. On the palate this is quite heavy for a beer of this color. It coats the mouth quite well yet finishes fairly crisp and clean. Amazingly drinkable and the alcohol is almost undected. Very well done..

Bottle: About the same as the old rating, rating is up 0.2. RBSG 2004: Orangy red with a small white head. Big grapefruit, pine, spruce and orange aroma, starts off pretty bitter and get more bitter from there. Chewy mouthfeel with a long aftertaste.

First Sample
Pours a lightly hazy, ruby-copper color. The beer is topped by a creamy tan to amber colored head. The aroma is most strongly of candied citrus fruits, and pine. This is a nice fully hop-flavored beer. I get notes of grapefruit, lychee, pine, and a nectar that is made up of hop Lupulin glands. There is a nice mouth coating bitterness in the finish. The taste reminds me of candied orange peels, but also has notes of sweet caramel, toasted biscuits, heady malts. Overall this beer is quite chewy with a medium bodied character that is derived from the residual malts that help carry and accentuate the hops. This beer finishes with a citrus hop zing that definitely lingers on the palate.

Second Sample
Pours a clear copper color that sits under a foamy, thick tan head. The aroma is redolent of piney hop aromatics. There is a thick mouthfeel to this beer that definitely lingers. The taste is dominated by pine and it is quite bitter in the finish. There are definite notes of candied orange peel, but the flavor is dominated by the pine notes and the intense bitterness in the finish. As my palate adjusts to the harshness in this beast, it gets tastier and more in balance. I can’t really taste it, but there is a serious malt backbone here, which helps to carry the over-the-top level of hopping that is in this beer. This tastes quite fresh, but, oddly not nearly as good and balances as when I first had this. I think that this needs a little bit of age on it to mellow out.

22 oz bottle via trade w/ TChrome. Poured a deep copper with an average sized head. Huge pine and citrus hop nose with caramel malt and alcohol hiding in the background. Massive pine and citrus hops in the flavor as promised by the nose. Good base of malt present as well. Medium bodied and a little syrupy on the mouthfeel. Overall I was not real impressed with this beer. Extremely hoppy (like punch-you-in-the-face hoppy), but it didn’t seem to have the depth and complexity in the hop profile that I want from IIPA’s. Just a boatload of hops.

12oz bottle. Pours a bright, clear orange-amber color; off-white head with solid retention and mixed-bubbled lacing. Lots of aggressive, piney and earthy hops in the aroma; slightly astringent, but generous with toffee maltiness underneath. Medium-to-full mouthfeel: intensely chewy and quite agressive hop character (following the nose): piney, earthy bitterness, chewy malt underneath (caramel, toffee, nuttiness); not even close to balanced - a straightforward hop-bomb that’s a bit too astringent and too aggressive for me to really enjoy this. Not exactly my ideal hop profile, and low on the drinkability scale for me. Some hop-numbness on the tip of the tongue, which is nice. Lengthy, numbing finish: earthy and piney bitterness, chewy candy sugar and caramel.

Rerate, bottle
Pours a lush brown/red, more akin to an English ale than an IPA. Aroma is predominantly malt. Flavor does feature the prerequisite grapefruit/orange combination, but not nearly as bitter or mouth-puckering as the label would have you believe. Still, a nice treat that is worth a revisit every once in awhile.

Murky Orange/Brown Hues with off White Head. Sweet Toffee/Caramel Malt and Heavy Hopped Aroma. Huge Amounts of Sweet Caramel and Toffee...Citrus, Light Pine Notes...Wet and Dry Hopped..Sweet Dry Finish. Heavy All the Way Around...Very Sweet. You Know You’re Drinking a Heavy Hitter but That Aside, It’s Well Balanced and Quite Drinkable.

Bottle (65 cl) from Barley Wine, Copenhagen, Denmark. Hazy orange amber with a rich and creamy off-white head with a yellow tinge. Strong piney and citric hops dominate in front of a caramelly malt backbone. Alcohol is evident but not prominent. Medium to thick in body and velvetly smooth. Immensly bitter yet balanced. A very good DIPA.