12 oz bottle. Pours a hazy copper color with moderate head. Aromas of bready malts and floral pine. Flavors ares malt forward, bready and somewhat sweet, with a bit of bitter citrus and piney finish. Maybe somewhat old as bottled in 2015. But I don’t mind a chewy malty DIPA. Very nice

Bottle, Wine Warehouse. Plan of going to Random Row foiled after a few hours of yard work and not wanting to move off the couch, so let’s go big. Pours orange with a large frothy beige head.Nose is very faint under that huge head, so letting it sit a bit. OK, so grapefruit, pineapple, minor caramel. Flavor is full of booze, with a heavy amount of grapefruit peel and almost grapefruit concentrate. Not very malty - which I kinda like, a little grass, and even more grapefruit.

Out of the bottle. Caramel malt takes center stage here. Slight orange. Pours a mostly clear orange with dusted white topping across the top. Taste is slightly cloying malt, a little tingling on the sides of the tongue. Low bitterness. Hops really get overtaken by the malt and the residual sweetness. Looking forward to my next bottle to see if this gets an upgraded score.

Bottle. Golden orange color. Aroma of grapefruit, pine, caramelised malt and tropical fruit. Taste has fresh pineapple, mild bitter pine, tropical fruit, mango and soft caramelised malt. High abv well hidden. This is great, way better than hopslam.

Pour is a hazy amber with a small white head. Aroma is honeydew melon with some sweet earthy malt. Flavor is pine, earthy malt, melon fruitiness and there is a slight sweetness but not as huge as I thought it would be. There is also a very noticable alcohol which gets bigger as the beer warms. This is a solid old school DIPA. A little malt heavy with some west coast pine/grapefruit hops.

Bottle from Brown Derby Wines (warm), brewed 7/10/15, drunk 11/1/15.
Ya, so not exactly the most fresh sample at almost four months old and having sat on the shelf. But since you can’t get the damned stuff in New England (and I never see it in NY or MI when I’m there), I figured I’d pick up a bottle and see how it held up, not planning on rating it if it seemed like the 4 months had been terribly detrimental. That being said, this is an OVER 10% abv, heavily hopped, bottle conditioned beer, so four months is certainly not unreasonable and in some instances may actually give the beer a little time to cool off.
With that long prelude, the beer pours an auburn-tinged dark amber with some tan and dark beige tints. Sandy-beige head is medium-sized, fairly dense and retained fairly-steadily at cover. Good clarity with a bit of sediment left behind in the bottom of the bottle.
Nose is full of cherries, oranges, strawberries, watermelon and ruby red grapefruit. Toffee and caramel malts quickly reach up to balance and the typical Bells house yeast character is attractively added to the picture. There are pinches of alcohol-laced esters but by and large, it’s not overly boozey relative to its size. Lush, juicy, rich and bold, it reminds me more than a little of their massively hoppy, alcoholic pale ale brewed just over 10 years ago (batch 6000).
The flavor just screams Batch 6000. If you told me this was a recreation I’d be hard pressed to offer up much to dispute it. Huge, juicy ruby red grapefruit mixing with big caramel malt sweetness and warming alcohol tones. Gains complexity via pineapple, apricot and meyer lemon-like notes emerging with warming and breathing. Impressively tight carbonation is low to moderate and creates a creamy texture and huge body in concert with all of this malt. Bitterness is high, but not quite obnoxiously so (though fresh, batch 6000 was very intensely hoppy and I assume this would be the same). I don’t know what it is about Bells big beers. I usually can’t stand high abv malt and hop monsters, but this was good. The texture and carbonation go a long way, for one, but the flavors are so enjoyable here as well. On top of that, Bells almost always puts out malty and rich beer with still a high level of attenuation and this is no exception. Or maybe I’m just completely biased towards Bells at this point, past the point of no return....

Faint orange peel and pencil shavings aroma. Cloudy orange, medium yellow head, nice lacing. Lemon zest, whole orange. Grapefruit peel finish. Full body, moderate carbonation, extremely bitter, resinous. Wow, the IBUs are off the chart with this one. I can tolerate quite a bit of the overhopping that has become in vogue, but I didn’t enjoy this very much. Tone it down.