Got (hop)slammed!
Jeff wrote about hops and beer (hopicity) a while back, including Bell’s Hopslam, and since the brewery is in Kalamazoo, MI—my home for the holidays—I figured I try to get some straight from the brewery because Hopslam is a seasonal release (came out in October) and the chance of getting it in the store was, well, chancy.
After having no luck in the brewery’s store my step-father-in-law and I wanted to see if it was on tap. Without going into too much detail, you can easily get slammed by what I’ll describe as vibrant, “buddy” beer, but can it still be a beer at 9.2%? I remember a “beer-wine” from a small brewery tucked away in mountains east of Bellingham, WA that was 10.6%. Is there an established corner of the alcohol envelope that turns a beer into a beer-wine?
10% can be quite nice. A solid barley wine or Christmas beer can easily hit that number. The Bells Batches (getting close to 8000!) go above 10%.
Comment by jeff — November 28, 2006 @ 2:31 pm