Pizza Port Hop 15

Brewed by Port Brewing/Lost Abbey
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
San Marcos, California USA

botlte shared with faroeviking at ørsted, copenhagen. yespr and ungstrup gave me some of this few months ago also at ørsted, but that day i lost my notes. i remembered it being darn good, so i bought it as soon as i saw it in the fridge. cloudy orange, thick light orange head. piny and sweet hops, peach, dryness. very well composed hoppy aroma. hopy, dry, flowery, fruits in the flavor, malty sweetness, a hint of caramel, grapefruit, pine, ends dry and piny, accompanied with malty sweetness. a well balanced and hoppy thing. NICE.

22 oz bottle, poured into a tulip. Murky amber with minimal off-white head. Aroma initially piney hops, then big caramel sweetness hits. Taste is very malty sweet, with caramel apple, and a hop bite at the end. Not sure how fresh this one is, and whether the hops have diminished, but seems more sweet than hoppy. Crisp mouthfeel, kinda syrupy. Good, but not the best DIPA I have had.

22oz bottle. Pours dark orange slightly hazy with a thin white head. Nose is like a barley wine. Hoppy but way to malty for the style. You can smell alot of malt sweetness in there. Nice citrus rind when it manages to penetrate the malt. Taste is hugely bitter with alot of earthy resiny hops. Kinda disjointed I get alot of types of bitterness (unsuprising with 15 different kinds of hops). Some earthy, spicy, citrus and everything else. Just because you can add 15 kinds of hops doesn’t necessarily mean you should. A bit of a mess, I expected better.

Pours hazy dark orange with very thin to nonexistent white head. Disappointing. Nose is candied with orange and grapefruit. Palate offers a soft malt component up front with the grapefruit and orange hoppiness coming through nicely to take over. Good balance, pleasant bitterness for IPA lovers, and the finish is somewhat tart.

I think I must have gotten a bad bottle, because there was a truly gross amount of yeast floating around. I gave the appearance a 2 for that reason, even though I think it was a fluke. I like 90 minute more, but this one is different - it is less sweet and more hoppy. In fact, Hop 15 might be the hoppiest beer I’ve had yet. Also, it avoids the over-sweetness I expected from a 10% abv beer. There is sweentness, but it is a mild amount, and well balanced by the hop onslaught. Its hard to get a head with this beer, but when you do, it is delicious.

Bomber. Pours a dusky russet-amber. Aroma is all citrusy, tangy hops, but not as strong as I had imagined it might be. Smoothe initial flavor of malt and hops followed by pine and sweetness. Very smoothe finish. Just a really good IIPA. Not surprising, considering the source.

Bottle at the “Drink for Charity” event at Rattle & Hum. Pours a hazy apricot gold with a medium white head. Pine, pineapple, vanilla, and sweety honeyed malt on the nose. Medium bodied and malty and just a balancing touch sweet. Ends with a very good grapefruit and quinine bitterness. Another one of the better ones for the day. Darn tasty. 848317

Rerated without remembering that I’d had it before: Bottle. Pours a cloudy brown with small white floaties and a medium sized toffee hued beige. Large pine, citrus, mango and pineapple, grapefruit aromas. Medium bodied, caramel, slightly oxidized malt, earthy hop bitterness. Slow quinine bitter finish. Very well done. 848417

This was a big beer. Color was very deep amber, it’s mouthfeel was very thick. I enjoyed it but not as much as I thought I would. Good beer but not great.