Double Gooch Imperial International Pale Ale
Devils Backbone Brewing Company

Nose pine, resin, grapefruit, dank, faint earthiness. Taste pine, sweet tropical fruit, slight lemon & malt, balanced. Medium body with a mild bitter finish. Best of the Collabs!

 

 

 

 

 

A: A golden apricot in color with a medium white head.

S: Dank and resiny. Pine, and a lot of it. Take Pine multiply it by dank, then double it. Smells awesome.

T: Citrus with grapefruit dominating, and resinous pine. Pleasantly bitter with a caramel and orange peel finish. Tasty.

M: Medium in body with fairly high carbonation for the style. A long lingering bitterness in the finish.

O: There is some definite bitter in this one. Delicious, but a little mean.

Pours a light amber with a thick cap of white head, leaning towards creamier. The aroma is wonderful, with nice floral and fruity hops aromas. The taste is good, with a similar flvaor profile as the aroma and the addition of a caramel malt sweetness, but there was an off-putting metallic bite to it right after pouring that went away with a little time. The body is lighter with a little bit of carbonation and a hops bite.

 

The beer pours a nice white and small bubbly head that dissipates quickly. The beer itself is a nice clear light copper that has a nice orange appearance. It looks pretty good. The color is vibrant and gives a nice aura for the beer.

The beer has orange and floral smell with a sweet malt backbone. The overall result is a kind of a sweet orange smell to it and slightly smells like good onions.

The beer taste is surprisingly different from the smell. Instead of an orange taste, the taste is more citrusy and pine than orange or floral. Additionally, the hop taste seems to be a little bit spicy in the aftertaste. Aftertaste also has a nice orange note. Specifically, the kind of citrus note that you get from eating the pulp.

The mouthfeel is surprisingly light. The body is heavy but the beer goes down quite smoothly with what feels like almost no weight thanks to the biting carbonation.

Overall, a pretty good beer and one of the better beers in the collaboration pack.

This was definitely the best of the DB collaboration 12 pack. If this were a regular offering I would drink it a lot.

 

Second bottle from the Devil's Backbone collaboration variety pack; bottling date is February 13th, 2015.

Color is a dark orangey-gold, with a white head of foam that fizzes audibly for a good bit after pouring. Shrinks after a bit, but leaves a thin layer on top. Very clear, with some little bubbles rising up from the bottom. Overall, looks very nice -- I really liked how consistent and noisy the foam on top was when pouring.

The smell is, as you'd probably expected from an imperial IPA, basically an explosion of hops right away. I got a good whiff upon opening the bottle and more upon pouring. Only a bit of the piney sort of thing I get in a lot of hoppy beers -- this is more fruity, leafy/herbal, and even faintly onion-y at times. After a bit, I can even pick up a little bit of a bread-crusty sort of thing from the malt, though it is more noticeable in the flavor than the smell.

The taste is also hop-forward for sure -- a bit of that piney sort of thing (but just a bit), but the most prominent hop flavors are a fruity taste that seems to resemble peach more closely than anything else that immediately comes to mind and a definite leafy/herbal/bordering-on-spicy flavor. There's a bit of a bread-crust type thing going on from the malt as well, though the hops are definitely stronger. This bready flavor hangs around on the aftertaste sometimes, as does a bit of leafy and bitterness (and sometimes, but not usually, a little bit of pine.) As mentioned in the smell, there is a bit of an oniony sort of flavor too -- not like raw onion, it's definitely not overpowering, more of a bit of a cooked/roasted sort of onion presence. The way this oniony flavor combines with the leafy/herbal flavor and the bread-crust malt actually reminds me of some really tasty bread I had not long ago which had onions and various spices baked into the outer crust, except that bread was pretty salty and I'm not getting salt from the beer, needless to say. Really good -- a lot of flavor, but none of the flavors overwhelms the others too much despite several of them coming out pretty strong, they work together very nicely.

I'm probably sounding like a broken record a bit at this point, but the mouthfeel is really nice too. There's just a bit of warmth from the 8% ABV on the first sip or two, but after that you would never guess that this is so high in alcohol -- there's less "warmth" than most (if not all) of the beers I've had in the 7% ABV range. Simultaneously feels easily-drinkable enough that you can take a good-sized gulp if you want and "big"/substantial enough that you could take just small sips, and neither feels weird (though I'm finding myself preferring something in between the two -- "big sips" or "small gulps" I guess you could say.) Maybe feeling just a bit sticky on the lips too.

Overall, as you could probably guess from reading everything written above, this is a very good beer. I really like that the hops, despite definitely being the element that stands out the most, aren't just a super-strength pine-tree explosion (nothing against "piney" hops, it's just nice to have something different!), there's so much more going on with both the varying hop flavors and the bit of bread-crust malt coming in too.

 

Coppery in color with a 2 finger off white head. That unfortunately leaves almost no lacing. Neat bubbles, one stream was of maybe the tiniest I've seen. Another was much larger and big enough to see through them, like rings.

One whiff, and it's Oh my god, this is going to be the best beer I've sampled in awhile. A glorious aroma. Peach like with tropical fruit: very ripe citrus and pineapple at the least. A bit of sweet caramel malt and a pleasant damp earthiness as opposed to dank/unpleasant earthiness.

Taste doesn't quite hold up to the aroma, but it's still very good. Early on the taste approaches dank woodsiness, but it's not off putting at all. A hint of sweet malt/tart hops becoming more bitter tart in the end. A bit of fruity grape on occasion with tart grapefruit and rind.

Medium+ in body with light to moderate fizz and moderate syrup. Farily crisp with light warmth.

Overall, this is a well rounded, rather complex brew. Not sessionable by any means. It's a beer to be savored. I would jump at the chance to try this again.