Three Floyds Dreadnaught Imperial IPA

Brewed by Three Floyds Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Munster, Indiana USA

BAM finally get to try this bad boy, and it was worth the wait. First of all I’ll thank BUNKYPOP for sending me this all the way from Illinois! Pours a dark gold body, with some cloudy orange properties. Head is just off-white, short lived and medium sized. In the end the head just sorta sat around the edge of the glass. Aromas are a huge blast of hops, citrus (lemon and orange), sweet malty candies, and some grassy notes too. Complex! Taste is like a hops train coming straight for your mouth, and it explodes in your mouth. HUGE HOPS, bitterness, orange peel, candied malts, grainy and grassy, and a slight boozey warmth. Finish is boozey and warming, huge bite in the mouth. Long lasting hoppy aftertaste. Suprisingly smooth and enjoyable for the alcohol content. Awesome and prime example of the style. Well done Three Floyds!

Bomber sampled at Butters’ 1500 / MmmcKay’s 200 tasting. Clear orange pour with good off white head. Nose is simply a wonderful boquet of floral hops that melds together beautifully in the flavor with honey and pine. Abv is very well hidden. Perfectly balanced. Phenominal.

(Bottle, Oliver Twist - Stockholm) Clear, amber-coloured beer with a quickly decreasing head. The smell is rank pine-needles and blackcurrant. Pineapple, apricot with a sting of facial tonic alcohol. The taste is full bodied and leaves the palate num. It is both soft and rank at the same time with a burning feeling. Continues with a taste of liqourice, syrup, grapefruit and a hint of pineapple. The beer has a long bitter finish. Best I.P.A ever. A beer to travel far for! 2 try at OT, Stockholm. Pours dark amber with hardley no head. Aroma of apricots, mango, strawberry jam, violets and elderberrys. Wonderful mixture of hops and malt. Citrusy soap. Thick but fresh. Great body. Syrup. Apricots, pineapple, citrus and ripe mango. Salty and peppery. Tiny notes of tomatoes. Really clean taste, nothing wrong with it at all, ripe hard cheese. Rasin. Lives a spicy numnes.( Bottle: try number 3, thanks hopscotch) Pours reddish amber. Still fruity and still a nice hoppy aroma with a toasted and light nutty malt backbone. Exotic and berry-ish. Spicy and sweet. Still soft, full and complex but something is missing from the early days. This is not comparable to a fresh Dreadnaught…

I will have to choose my words carefully here. While I have to admit that Dreadnaught was a decent beer, I found it hard to believe that this was a double IPA because it just didn’t have that mind-blowing tounge melting double IPA effect. It was hoppy but so are a thousand other brews. This one would never stand up against the better double IPA’s of this world such as Ruination, Uberhoppy, Denogginizer, Pliny and AleSmith’s IPA. How this one is rated so high is mind-boggling. I think it’s completely overhyped and simply not deserving. With that said, the aroma was grapefuit and pine with an emphasis on the fruit. Mouthfeel was soft but a bit sticky. Flavor was nice with a balanced malt/hop attack. I would have to say this falls somewhere between an IPA and a double IPA, like a purgatory IPA.

bottle. Cloudy bright orange/red pour with a foamy white head. Swirling the snifter reveals filmy and clingy lacing. The aroma is so intense. It doesn’t take much effort more than breathing near the beer to pick up deep grapefruit, bright flowers, sweet caramel. It’s very complex and pleasing, like standing in an orchard. Drinking it is much less serene. It’s like a punch in the mouth. The biting citrus acidity courses long after one small sip, but I mean that in the best way possible. The mouthfeel is semi-oily. Man, the hops burn the whole palate down into the throat. I’m fairly certain that’s not alcohol burn, but rather the sheer spiciness eminating from this hop bomb. There is indeed plenty of malt presence to balance this beast, but I would not describe this as a sweet brew. The finish finally brings out subtle notes of peaches, grapes, biscuits, but it takes some time to get there past the onslaught of zesty acidity. I drank this as a night cap and when I awoke the next morning I still had hops on my breath. This stuff is beautiful.
[May 3, ’07]
I was excited to try this one again. I have to say, it wasn’t as amazing this time around. Maybe I got a bottle that wasn’t as fresh. Maybe I drank this one just a little too warm. It was still delicious, but just not as ridiculous. My score reflects my first, life-changing encounter with Dreadnaught.
[May 1, 2008]
Bomber, big thanks to BossHossBikes. Man, this is an amazing double IPA. Gigantic pine, grapefruit, orange blasts my nostrils. The malts are a pathetic attempt at balance with this hop heavy beast. I get more deep citrus which even expands into some acidic territory I associate with cinnamon. This is truly an impressive IIPA. The clarity and depth are commendable.
[May 8, 2008]
Bomber. Pours a golden hue with a fair head. The aroma is fantastic. There was a snifter of DFH 90 minute, fresh mind you, nearby so I did a little aroma comparison. Dreadnaught pwn3d. Tons of pine, grapefruit, ganja, orange, pineapple. . .the nose is very sharp, stinging, yet remarkably clean. Flavor is more of the same. Straight up hop onslaught delights my tongue with a bombardment of herbal and citrus stings. I keep wanting to describe IIPA’s like this as balanced, though that’s not accurate since malts are certainly secondary. Dreadnaught is one of the most solid in the style I’ve sampled.

Bottle from iowaherkeye. Tasted at http://www.ratebeer.com/events-detail.asp?eventID= with DenverLogan, and Quaff members. Before tasting, I have a slight negative bias, thinking this beer can’t be as good as it’s rating, but I was wrong, what a wonderful IPA. 1 finger small bubble head that dies quickly. Orange-yellow color. Nice hop aroma that demands to be smelled over and over again. Why is the smell so pleasant, but the bitterness is low in the taste. Extremely well balanced taste.9,3,10,5,18:4.5 Rerate 10/12/07: Bottle from Dave at Stone, tasted at Churchill’s with deftim13, Ivan, and Aaron. Nice melanoidal malt aroma. 6 months old. Hops have mellowed, but still great. 9,4,9,4,18:4.4

Bomber thanks to EithCubes. Pours a cloudy orange color with a medium white head. The aroma is tons of grapefruit, some rich malts, and honey. The flavor of this is like a freshly cut grapefruit covered in honey with a side of fresh fruit. Some woody aspects too. A thick and creamy mouthfeel. There is a ton of flavor here, sweet and bitter, but very smooth, not notice of alcohol expect a nice warmth in the finish. Just amazing.

22oz bottle from Parti-Pak Liquors (Indianapolis, IN). Pours a fairly clear dark amber to copper color with a one finger off-white head that settles slowly but still provides lacing on the glass. Aroma is floral and sweet with notes of hops, citrus, grapefruit, citrus, honey and hints of toffee. Flavor is sweet and floral with notes of citrus and hops, grapefruit, honey, caramel, and hints of spice. Generally medium body with a hoppy finish.