Settling the Score
OK friends, first off, happy respawn day! As Amanda said to me earlier, “Happy beer and soda day!”
The real premise of this post, is to settle an old score, first perpetrated here. The great rift over Founders Devil Dancer.
First, lets look at Ian’s qualms with the beer.
- No head
- Too Hoppy
- Too much booze
Now, let us analyze this. Number 3 directly correlates to number 1. If you hit 13% by volume, unless you’re rocking a champagne yeast strain in the secondary, you’re just not going to have head. Remember our Imperial Stout, Ian? I just can’t bring myself to have a qualm with 13% by volume. Especially here, the alcohol flavors are hardly noticeable. Then again, my current sickness may deceive me. Still, it is very difficult to hate a high AC beer in my book. They tend to be very well backed by the malt profile, and lend an interesting complexity to the beer.
Now, having taken care of 1, and 3, lets examine the issue of hoppiness. Ian, please remove the sand from your vagina. Sure, it is one of the hoppiest beers in existence at 112 IBU’s according to Founders site, but come on… you can handle it. I really enjoy all of the flavors it has. I have yet to find myself shunning a hoppy beer, except for possibly Stone’s Ruination, as that was just weird. I felt like that one left most of the all the hops in the last 10-15 minutes of the boil as it was all flavor with much less accompanying bitterness.
Anyway, I can’t not give this beer a fantastic rating. Either my beer bff is getting weak in his old age, or he was really too sick to tell how delicious it was.
I give this a 9/10
Its exactly what a triple IPA should be. Not incredibly well balanced, full of hops and booze, with a slight malty sweetness to reside upon. Its fantastic. I’d give it a higher rating, but i’m not sure yet what is deserving of something like that.
I do have one sitting in my fridge right now, so it might be my job to have that with the hard boiled eggs that I eat every Easter.
I have to say that I was disappointed with Devil Dancer, but I’d say that’s more likely because it was talked up so much. It’s a good solid triple IPA, but I tend to think that the whole trend toward making the beer as hoppy as possible is a mistake. I would much prefer a well balanced, yet overtly hoppy beer to something that just trys to knock my socks off with the hoppyness of it.
[...] try a beer that I disliked so much last time. But at Brian’s insistence (and especially after his latest review), I’m giving it a second look. And you know [...]