Samuel Adams LongShot Double IPA

Brewed by Boston Beer Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Boston, Massachusetts USA

12oz. bottle. Freshly citric aroma, juicy and floral, full of grapefruit, honey, pine and showing some faint caramel sweetness. Hazy medium amber color with a lasting, fine head and nice lacing to match. Flavor profile is fairly well dominated by the significant hop presence, both in citric, spicy, piney, earthy flavors and huge bitterness, although towards the finish, enough toasty, bready, sweet malt appears to keep things mostly in check. Lasting fruity hop character. Oily, resinous, effervescent, gently warming mouthfeel, body is massively full. While enjoyable, it’s not something I would pick up regularly, even given the opportunity -- something about it feels overly heavy, weighty.

6/03/2009: Well, Sam Adams LongShot Double IPA is one solid Double IPA. It does not disappoint! The thick, cloudy, deeply golden colored beer has a generous amount of carbonation and a lasting, thick and creamy ivory-colored head. Both the aroma and flaovr are equally complex and hoppy. A hefty of roasted caramel-toffee malt has a heap of earthy, pine, resin, citrus, and floral hops on top! There is not only a heap of hop flavors, but the bitterness is pretty high as well. This beer has a medium-full body and is chewy yet somehow seems smooth. It is also thick enough to stay on the palate and allow the flavors and bitterness to linger long after swallowing. All and all this is a well-balanced beer that has been worthy of the wait for it since the delay in making it last year due to the hop shortage. This Double IPA can definitely hold its own among even some of the big boys. Wow, Sam Adams should work out a deal and just add this beer to their Imperial Series!

12 fl. oz. bottle (Purchase before SEP 2009) from Party Town in Florence, KY. Rating #196 for this beer.

12 ounce bottle in pint glass. Hazy caramel with lasting head and lace. Lemony grassy fresh hoppy aroma. Toasty light brown sugar with subdued fruit, nutty, very piney lingering tongue-tingling bitter finish with a slight malty cloy. Medium-full slightly sticky body. Nice carbo. Very complex but some of the thick doughyness is a little offputting. Still, very good.

Darker,Gold. Fat,lacey,froth sits above a tight,beaded,head. Huge aroma of pine,grapefruit,leaf,and slight alcohol. Thick,creamy,little too much carbonation for me.Totally bitter upfront(Rogue like) with caramel,bread,and more hops follow. Finish is lingering sap,floral,hops and malt.The bready,nutty,caramel malts open up much more as this warms. Cold this is just bitter. Served the way I like(chilled),this is a big, fairly balanced hop bomb.

Golden red color.... Extremely hoppy aroma.... Flavor has some initial sweetness but is extremely bitter throughout and leaves a strongly bitter flavor on the palate... Reminds me of the liukhoury 90, the IPA I brewed... Okay, just a little too bitter for my taste...

12oz bottle pours a medium copper color with a rich small bubble head. Pine, resin, and a slight citrus in the aroma. First sip was a surprise. Nice bitterness but not overbearing. Bitterness matches the aroma well. Bit of nuttiness and slight chocolate in the body. Medium body. Nicely balanced. Great job Mike!

From a bottle in a cheap soft plastic glass. Menacing oily appearance. Piny smell and bitter tar turpentine first taste impact. Impressions are tru to form. Soapy dish soap biting roof of mouth coating experience. Quite a session, wew. Thrashing triple hop pine tar green rinds endurance. Industrial strength, I think its making my glass softer. One bottle is all I could stand. Over all, on style; rude and crude. Gets me a little dizzy near the end. Terrible, yet I savored the punishment to the last drop.

They said this was a Pliny clone. I only had Pliny once, about 9 months ago, but that blew me away and this didn’t. There are so many of these things out there that the bar is high. Good DIPA, but I wasn’t creaming jeans or anything.