Shark Attack Double Red Ale

Pours coppery red into a shaker. Head quickly subsides to hug rim. Sweet cranberry and caramel aromas. Viscous, creamy sweet caramel with an alcoholic hop finish.

Thanks to toncatcher for this - bomber - pours a sticky-looking red, with a light soapy ring of foam - it’s got the highly sweet, sticky malt and assertive hop aroma of your typical California ASAs ( see, Double Bastard), with the moderate alcohol presence that I’ve come to expect from beers like this - however, the flavor does it’s best to set the beer apart from the rest - low carbonation enhances a slick mouthfeel - pretty sweet, but not sticky and cloying, with strong cherry character, and some warming spiciness that becomes even stronger in the finish, which is complimented by a moderate alcohol warmth - hops don’t become as potent as the aroma suggest, and they add more of an herbal quality that compliments the spiciness - the alcohol becomes a bit too potent as it warms, as does the sweetness - so it tries its best to avoid the pitfalls of the common ASA, but still winds up falling into a few of them.

Draught pint at Solana Beach on 3/23/2007
Lovely, soft, strawberry-amber body with some darker ruby tints and a yellow-flecked, medium-beige head that is large and well-retained, providing webs of lace down the glass. Clarity is medium-high. Some glassiness/chill-haze and light carbonation in the liquid.
Expecting a big malt bomb from a "Triple Red", I was quite surprised to smell what seemed like yet another IPA. Fortunately, quite a delightful one. Very grassy and floral hop aromatics are very heady, but definitely strongly aromatic and pleasant. Extremely fresh, they slowly, but irreversibly give way to a more expected citrus hop nose, as Rastacouere points out. Some crystal malt mixes in with the citrus hops and produces an orange hard candy-like note, but juicy, red grapefruit notes destroy the hardness and plenty more melon and sweet oranges dot the finish. Definite wintergreen and pine resin linger around as well, but I never found it too bitter in the nose. Soft, buttercream-like malts spill forth with warming and provide a nice balance without becoming entangled in the hops. No alcohol that I could find, despite its strength, and a very strong aroma overall.
Creamy malts and a light, but engaging carbonation produce a very soothing texture. The malt has notes of toastiness, vanilla, medium-dry caramel and sweet cream, but never gets cloying, adding more texture than it does flavor. Crystal malt is fully absorbed in to the soft base malts. Pine and grapefruit lay on top of the malt, from the start, and provide a good deal of bitterness, but also a huge flavor. Cherries, lemons, nectarines and peaches emanate from the hops, while red apples and a berry-like malt fruitiness is complementary as well. Some doughiness builds up on the end, and the creaminess thickens somewhat. Add to this a very large pine-like acidity and it’s quite a mouthfull. But for all that, I found the alcohol to be very well-controlled and the beer quite flawless. Definitely a beer to be approached slowly, but from the wonderful opening of floral and grassy hops, to the creamy, soft texture and ample bitterness, I think there’s a lot to enjoy here.

[At GABF 2004] An unclear copper colored beer with a beutiful orange head. The aroma is sweet hoppy with some grassy notes. The flavor is surprisingly malty considering the aroma, but still with strong notes of hops, and the alcohol content shines thru.