Shared bottle at Mi2 at Cardinal 10.04.17. Slightly hazy pale golden. Small head. Fine aroma of Tokayer and ripe tropical fruits, dried tropical fruits and succade. Similar taste. Excellently balanced!!!

650 ml bottle, Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger. ABV is 13%. Brownish deep golden colour, thin white head. Strong aroma of fruity hops, orange marmalade and caramel, hints of alcohol. Strong and concentrated flavour, aggressive bittering hops, overwhelming sweetness, again orange marmalade and caramel, loads of alcohol. Not my cup of tea.

Bottle 650ml @ home
Pours hazy deep golden with a off-white head. Aroma has notes of malt, caramel, alcohol, citrus, grapefruit and pine needles. Taste is medium to heavy sweet and heavy bitter with a long warm, caramel, citrus, orange, grapefruity and piney finish. Body is full, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. Too strong and boozy but still very nice.

[Thank you David!][650 ml. split by two @ Boxing Day Tasting][Batch #006 08:53 - so yeah it has a time stamp but no date, least useful bottle dating ever.] Hazy orange, creamy off-white head with nice lacing. Nose is pleasant pine resin but also a very thick strange yoghurt profile mixed with white sugar, yeast, pine, cooked apple. Taste is too yeasty, white sugar, oddly sweet sugar, overshadowing the hop, hop is lightly medicinal with pine resin, cooked apple, finish is just pure medicinal alcohol, brutal, feels far boozier than 13 % ABV. Body is medicinal spirit, thick yoghurt, very malty. Overall this felt more like a challenge than a real beer, stupidly boozy, odd sweetness probably to hit the ABV, yoghurt profile,... It was a chore to finish it. I wanted to like it more. I liked the regular one on draft, not sure what went on down here.

One of Evil Twin’s Molotov Cocktail variants, this one hopped with nothing but Simcoe (one of my preferred hops so this can’t go wrong...). My bomber is an older one for sure, but as is too often the case with these American beers, no bottling date is mentioned; I do not know how many batches were made, but this must be the original, making it a bottle of two years old. Thick, frothy, irregular, snow white head lacing in ’dots’ around the glass, quickly thinning in the middle to a diffuse veil; hazy orange blonde robe with warm peachy hue and translucent dots of yeast throughout. Aroma breathes the typicalities of Simcoe, with hints of toasted garlic, shallot, grapefruit peel, old orange juice and smoked paprika, accompanied by a lightly ’rusty’ oxidation, but fortunately still subtle enough not to disturb; other impressions include, in a decreasing order of intensity: dried mango, spruce, honey liqueur, biscuit, sundried tomato, warm apple cake, cognac, fried egg, lightly toasted white bread, sweet sherry (must be the age again), mandarin flesh, dried banana, red curry paste, sugar syrup, white pepper, old dried ginger root, iron, corn oil. Very lively onset, sweet exotic fruits all around varying from dried banana and blood orange over maracuja to guave and candied mango, superseded by a kind of subtle, ’white’ sugariness that sticks a bit to the teeth, but manages to avoid off-putting cloyingness; carbonation is medium, mouthfeel is evidently very full and oily, very vinous as well, slick and ’heavy’ - the latter being no big surprise for a beer of this potency. A thick, viscous wave of biscuity malt sweetness glides over the tongue, with just a subtle toasted twist adding a tiny bit of bitterness; meanwhile hop bitterness, already noticeable in the onset, grows and grows, arriving at a full-fledged, aromatic, piney, spicy and tonic water-like bitterness in the finish, with this toasted sweet onion character that I tend to associate with Simcoe rising up retronasally. Still, in spite of this wave of generous Simcoe goodness, the honeyish and very - heavily sugared - orange juice-like sweetness persists unabatedly under all this and goes down into the finish along with the oily, spicy hop bitterness, as is so often the case in these superstrong ’imperial’ IPAs. Add the vinous, oily mouthfeel and a firm dosis of warming, Pineau- and brandy-like alcohol and you get something with certain barleywine-like traits (certainly at this age!), though in all this remains firmly rooted in the IIPA style. I never expect subtlety from an Evil Twin beer and this is no exception; like the other Molotov Cocktails, this is a very bold, high profile, demanding and mighty brew, perhaps a tad over the top - yet still retaining dignity, complexity and drinkability. Reminds me a bit of the actual ’Heavy’ variant in this series, though just a tad less extreme. If you prefer your big IPAs to end dryingly bitter, however, this will not be your beer: the sugary orange juice sweetness is there from the very beginning till the bitter end, at near equal force as the hop bitterness; both factors have been tuned up, but somehow I think this beer would have been more refined if that sweet component would have been just a little bit more restrained. That being said: this is, in all, an older sample (probably near to two years old), so I have every reason to assume the hop character is more outspoken in a younger one, thus achieving the balance I’m looking for. I’ll give this one the benefit of the doubt, it’s the only sample I can judge now and I did enjoy it for sure.

Pours a slightly cloudy, copper-gold, with nice-sized, lasting head. Aroma is quite grassy, whereas the flavor is rather sweet, with lots of citrus. There’s almost a medicinal quality to the flavor--cough syrup or something. More than a little licorice or anise flavor in this one, too. Good, bitter hop finish to the whole enterprise. I just wish it wasn’t quite so sweet.

A golden DIPA with a very thin off white head. Crisp biscuit malt with light resinous floral hops, grapefruit pulp, light sulfur notes, nice. In mouth, a nice crisp biscuit malt with loads of puckering bitter resinous floral hops, grapefruit pulp, alcohol warmth, smooth and in your face. Bottle at OttBottShare April 2016.

Sampled on draft at Hou Thou this beer poured a hazy apricot color with a small foamy white head that left a bit of lacing. The aroma was tangy and sweet with cactus, pine, sugar, honey and a medicinal note. The flavor was tart, bitter and citric with notes of sugar, hard candy, prominent sweetness, a bit of booziness and a medicinal note underneath. Amazingly long finish of pine, cactus and sugar. Full body. Ok.

1 pt 6 fl oz bottle from Mikkeller webshop. Orange amber colour, white foam head leaving lacing and nose of tropical fruit, citrus, pine, hop resin. Flavour is malt, caramel, toffee, sweetish, with juicy mango, orange citrus, grapefruit and pine resiny earthy hop bitterness. Syrupy mouthfeel, medium bodied, soft carbonation, warming dry tangy bitter finish. Very drinkable.