Bells Hopslam Review!!!

I had talked about Bells beer in my previous post. Well I find myself on the road again this week and just popped in to another Total Wine store to pick up a sixer of Bells Two Hearted Ale (my new favorite beer). Anyway, they have it in the chilled section, figure I'll have one while doing a bit of work and haul the rest home to Atlanta. As I am getting ready to checkout I turn around to find a few light green colored cases of beer. What did I find? Nothing other than 4 cases of Bells Hopslam. Why is this a big deal? Well, Hopslam is a very limited release beer from Bells that everyone over on the Beer message boards has been raving over (yeah, there are boards that talk only about beer, heck your reading a blog about beer so don't act that surprised). Anyway, most of it has been bought up and I didn't find any when I was down in Florida so I had given up hope of getting to try this magic elixir. Haha! Not so, here it is right in front of me. Do I buy just a 6 pack? Nope, picked up a whole case (So, of you want some hopslam, there is about 3 cases left at the Total Wine near UNC Charlotte). Leave the case in the back of my car save one beer. Take it up to the hotel to chill in the fridge overnight.

Fast forward 24 or so hours and I find myself sitting here sipping on said Hopslam. It is a quite amazing beer. So here is my Bells Hopslam review.

I do have to take exception to the description it gives itself, "A Biting, bitter, tongue bruiser of an ale. With a name like Hopslam, what did you expect?". My reasoning? I don't think it is that bitter. 90 min, Victory Hop Wallop (which is back out now, guess that is even more beer for me to buy, along with Sweetwater Happy Ending), Stone Ruination and a few others pack a much larger bitter hop bite. Maybe I am just used to the hop bite and it really takes a huge IBU to kick my palette. Anyway, it is still an amazing beer. Very floral aroma, thus you know it is packed with hops. The bitterness is more up front. Hops hit leadoff here, no malt to speak of. The interesting bit of this beer is the finish. You would expect the hop bitterness to follow all the way through to the end but you get a quite pleasant citrus note at the end. It is just sooooo smooth it, really it is. What Bells has done is brew a very sneaky big beer. Kind of like in golf where some guys are "sneaky" long, this beer is sneaky big. It is 10% abv, it sure doesn't taste like that. Hopslam really is the kind of beer you could drink three or four in a row in 40 mins after mowing the lawn on a hot day and not think any thing of it. That is until you try to stand up and fall flat on your ass. Overall this is just a Wow beer. Please Bells, I beg you to start selling beer in Georiga!!! I think this one is an add to the hall of fame, maybe. I'll have to mull that over the rest of the case I have! I'll give it 4.5 pints out of 5. (Ukrainian judge deducted .5 a pint for the slightly misleading description)

Happy Drinking!