Jason McGlone

Okay.  A while back, I posted a beer review that mentioned the fact that I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to drinking and tasting beers.  This is absolutely true, and I was thinking the other day about something completely embarrassing.  More than completely embarrassing, especially when it comes to drinking beers and describing how they taste on a somewhat regular basis.  Oh, man.  I don’t even think I want to say…

I can’t identify hops in a beer.  It’s like being a blind painter.  No.  Not really.  It’s more like being a blind art critic, I suppose.

Now, I’d heard the term “Hops” on a pretty regular basis, and I’d read it at Beer Advocate and RateBeer, and I know that hops are vital to a beer’s flavor and blahblahblah, but I really hadn’t thought much about the beers I was drinking over the years; I just knew what I liked and didn’t like. Most microbrewed beers, I tended not to like because they usually had a “perfumey” sort of taste that overpowered the beer. Upon reading stuff, I suspected that that very well may be the hops at work. Feck.

That not being confirmed, I went about finding a beer that would clearly be “hoppy.” I succeeded.

Yep.  Hopslam.  The label, if you can’t tell, depicts what appears to be a man (woman?) buried in GIANT FUCKING HOPS, just like the Wicked Witch of the East, as if to imply, “This beer will FUCK YOU UP THE ASS with all the god-damned HOPPITUDE, MOTHERFUCKER.”  The back of the label reads, “A biting, bitter, tongue bruiser of an ale.” All indications were that I should be frightened, and that my tongue would beaten unmerciful by a beer, of all things.

So I thought that this beer, probably above all others, will help me to be able to identify just what hops do to beer.  I hoped so, anyhow.

I opened the beer, poured it into a pint glass, and took a whiff.  It smelled almost exactly like grapefruit juice.  This struck me as odd, but I’d smelled weirder things when sniffin’ beers before, so whatever.

The first drink tasted kind of fruity off the bat, and as I let it warm a bit on my tongue, the bitterness I expected started to seep in.  Drinking Hopslam wasn’t the fucking beating I thought it would be–it’s really a pleasant beer that I can honestly say agrees with me quite nicely–as I got closer to the end of the pint (12 oz., whatever), I began to get that perfumey quality that I was afraid of.  In this case, unlike with beers past, this flavor wasn’t all that unpleasant, and I found it somewhat welcome, surprisingly enough.  The beer’s reasonably thick, with not much head, and is just about the color of honey:

Overall, I’d rate this beer as an “Excellent” on a scale of crap-to-superb.  It comes highly rated by people who know way more than I do, and I’d definitely drink this beer again.  But not too much at once–it’s 10% ABV, which I didn’t know going into this beverage.  You should be able to find Hopslam at any well-respected liquor store–it’s widely distributed, being brewed by Bell’s in Michigan.  Bell’s is apparently a pretty well-respected brewery.  I’ll be trying more of their stuff VERY soon.

Enjoy!