Bell's Week: Hopslam

The beer geeks are going mad about this one, I'm sure.

Here's the thing about Bell's Hopslam. There is MADNESS surrounding its release each year. Madness! The beer is released once a year. Nothing special there, many craft beers are. Yet people buy it by the case -- bad idea, this is a beer best consumed within two months (8 weeks) of release -- drive miles out of their way to get it, and brag with abandon at having snagged some. The hype in beer enthusiast communities around this beer is INSANE.

The thing is, is this a good beer? Actually, hell YES it is. I've had it each of the last three years. With no Bell's available in New Jersey I've actually had to trade through the mail to get it. Glad I did. It's damn delicious. It really is.

But is it worth the insanity and hype that follows it? Is it one of the best beers in the world, as many would insist?

No. And let me explain, because it IS an excellent beer.

Hopslam is really really good. It's a double IPA released once each winter, usually around February. It's brewed with a load of honey, which gives it a wonderful sweetness, and it's also hopped to high hell. Tons of dry-hopping, I suspect, because while the beer has loads of hop character in the glass, it's got less bitterness than you'd expect in the taste. The aroma is wonderful. The taste is potent (backed by a huge 10% ABV) but very drinkable. The honey comes through nicely. It's super tasty, well-balanced, and overall awesome.

But dammit, this is NOT one of the world's top beers! Beer Advocate has it ranked in the Top 20, and Ratebeer has it at a more modest #26 overall. This IS a damn good beer, and if you can get it, get some. Drink it. Enjoy it. I have and I love it. But it's not so good that it warrants waiting on line (some people do), getting on waiting lists (ditto), or bragging as if you just snagged something super elusive like Westy 12 (considered by many the best beer in the world), because you didn't.

It's Hopslam. It's really good. But calm down, folks.

Bell's Week: Kalamazoo Stout

Kalamazoo. That's where Bell's got its start. It has a map and a bad website and a Wikipedia page and even a college.

But the most important thing of all is, it has a beer.

Hey, that's pretty awesome. Even Lakehurst doesn't have a beer, and that town has the damn HINDENBURG!

Kalamazoo Stout is (obviously) named after the town of Bell's birth. It's a stout brewed with brewer's licorice, which might sound weird but used to be common.

(Licorice isn't unheard of in brewing, and in fact used to be used fairly often in classic porters. Still is, at times. I used it in the colonial porter you can see in these pictures.)

With Kalamazoo Stout, the brewer's licorice is very up front, stepping on the typical roasted malt of a good stout and dominating it with licoricey (is that a word?) sweetness. It's tasty but just off-kilter enough so that I'm not sure you'd want to have more than one in a row. Definitely a nice twist on the style, I can't say I disliked this stout because I didn't, but Bell's makes better stouts. And so does everyone else.

Bell's Week: Two-Hearted Ale

Two-Hearted Ale is Bell's flagship beer, their American IPA made with Centennial hops. You ask a Bell's fan which beers they like and this one will invariably come up. (The fish on the label? The name? It's a reference to the Two-Hearted River in Michigan, a popular fishing spot made famous in a story by Hemingway.)

So goes without saying you've got to have one of these if you have some Bell's.

Once in the glass you'll get citrus on the nose, but it's laced with mild pine and a somewhat clinical herbal quality, as if it was a bag of illegal plants dunked in mango juice. As for taste, well, it tastes like it has been dunked in mango juice, and in the best way possible. Unlike most beers, this one is made with just a single hop; all the bitterness and hop flavor comes from that one hop instead of the usual blend of 2-4 in most beers. It's amazing the flavors this one hop can dish out. Very fruity. There is orange and mango and a touch of pine (but not much).

Two-Hearted Ale is bitter but not overly so, balanced so that it never veers into sweet but also doesn't merely blast the mouth with bitterness. You'll find few IPAs that manage to be both as hoppy yet as balanced as this. Bell's Two Hearted Ale is a highly regarded American IPA for a reason. It tastes damn good.

Bell's Week: Bell's Oarsman Ale

The first stop on our week-long journey through Bell's Brewery begins with Oarsman Ale, a new-to-me beer that surprised me with its deliciousness. Bell's touts this as their session beer, meaning it's a low-alcohol brew meant to quench your thirst. The kind of beer you can throw back all afternoon without ending up in the emergency room. Sounds fine to me, though it's not the sort of description that left me expecting big flavor.

How wrong I was.

First, a quick pour and a sniff. You don't expect much aroma from a session beer, but what a great smell from the glass! It's slightly tart with a bit of fruitiness. Very pleasant. The taste follows suit. This beer SCREAMS crisp spring days. There is a tart snap at the start and a hint of early summer fruit mixed nicely with the easy drinkability of a light ale. Frickin' delicious. Coming in at a dainty little 4% ABV, you don't expect much, but this is an outstanding session beer. I wish it was available in New Jersey. If it were, I'd drink it all summer. This beer is a winner that proves a beer doesn't have to be a monster to taste great. One of the best I've had from Bell's.

IT'S BELL'S WEEK!

Bell's Brewery is awesome. They make a ridiculous selection of beers which are almost always great. And by great, I mean freakin great.

Yet I can't get their beers. I write this blog out of New Jersey, which is unfortunate for a big reason: we don't get Bell's beer. New Jersey, believe it or not, gets distribution from more breweries than any other state in the nation. More than Oregon. More than California. More than New York. Yet we get no Bell's (not to mention no New Belgium, a craft brewery that gives Sam Adams and Yuengling a run for their money when it comes to size). Bell's just doesn't get here.

Bell's is out of Michigan, which, you'd never guess, is one of the best brewing states in America. I'm firmly on record as loving Founder's beers, also out of Michigan. Michigan also has Atwater, the much celebrated Jolly Pumpkin, the cool New Holland Brewing Co., Arcadia Ales, and dozens more. Bell's may be the biggest of all. They're pretty major when it comes to craft beer.

My first Bell's beer came courtesy of my friend Eric Ceresa. When he visited from Michigan in 2007 he brought local beer with him. That beer was Oberon, and as he explained, in Michigan you had Oberon with a slice orange. At the time, this idea was alien to me. Blue Moon had yet to explode and fruit in beer? No.

Well, yes. Because good is good. I had it that way, it was delicious, and I'm forever in his debt.
But I can't buy Bell's in New Jersey.

Thankfully, my buddy Jim, my coauthor on A Year of Hitchcock and co-host of the Year of Hitchcock Podcast, hooks me up when he visits. I've been able to have over a dozen Bell's beers, most more than once. On our most recent get together he brought me a fantastic assortment that included a six-pack of my already reviewed Bell's Oberon, among others.

So this week is dedicated to Bell's. Each day, I'm going to do a quick review of one of this brewery's awesome beers. Hope you enjoy ... especially if you can get their beer. Enjoy!