Double Bale Quail Imperial IPA 2002
Deschutes Brewery

12 oz. bottle pours an amber reddish hue with a two finger white head. Has a sweet caramel and floral hop smell. Medium bodied with a light carbonation. The taste is a faintly sweet caramel which is quickly pushed aside by a tart, hop and alcohol bitterness.


This brew tastes more like a Barleywine now than a Ipa . Not nearly as hoppy as it was two years ago when it was " fresh ".

Orange brown color. Medium head. Aroma is sweet and fruity with a touch oak. A full bodied Imperial IPA/barley wine /American Strong Ale. Malts are nutty and somewhat sweet. Hops are grapefruity, piney and spicy. A big very hoppy beer. Touch of oak and fruit. This beer is hop dominate, there is no attempt to even try to balance the malts. The hops balance each other out, but there is no attempt to meet the malts. Hides the 10% alcohol very well. Finish is nicely oaky. Mouthfeel is full and round. Finish is clean, crisp and oaky. Aftertaste is bitter, with a touch of alcohol bite.

2002 Vintage

This beer feels like a work in progress. Pretty good all around, but still missing something. The beer is caramel/amber in color with a slight head that is destroyed quickly by the alcohol. Body if free from any chill haze. The aroma is a combination vinous alcohol qualities with an English style dry-hopped aroma. Woody with slight oak notes. The taste is very murky: soft caramel and sweet berry flavors, followed by dry oak and spicy pine hop flavors. Finish is alcohol with a port wine like warmth. The body is slightly chewy but not cloying. This ale is a contemplation beer -- one that would be perfect in front of a roaring fireplace in midwinter.

Appearance: a dark, plummish brown color, and a slight, but solid cream-colored head.
"Imperial" IPA, that doubles as a barleywine, eh? Obviously the Imperialism reflects high alcohol, and that alone should catapult it into barleywine status, if I'm following their thoughts. With this strength, this hoppiness, and this flavor, it does!
Aroma: Fantastic! A buzzing hornet's nest of hoppiness! Every kind of fruit is set ablaze and swolders away in this astounding nose. Dark cherries, berries, grapes, more, unfolding, showing more alcohol, resembling port wine, dark and leathery, fierce, peppery, stinging, occupying every sense orifice, and becoming akin to taking a deep inhalation of cognac.
Hops dominate the mouth on first sip, slowly commanding the senses. Alcohol pretty much takes control, and steers the outcome of every consumption from here on in. Malt does it's part, too, but the hops, and the booze, never stop!
I'm spinning already, under this influence!
Perfectly tasty, lip-smacking texture! Very sweet, delicious, full-flavored!
Under more ideal circumstances, controlled laboratory tests, perhaps a more thoughtful or scientific discernment might result, but, alas, this was not my first taste of brew of the night, and I feel like I'm getting a triple whammy out of this bad boy! A small 12 0z. bottle, but a well-affected, and remembered, experience.
As tasty as I like my barleywines, much stronger than my favorite IPAs, oh, so over the top, but exquisitely created!
Good job, Deschutes, keep it up!

Not a huge amount of head. The initial head dies down and you are left with just enough head to keep the beer tasting good. The aroma is a very citrus hop smell with a light hint of maltyness. The initial taste is light with some sweetness which quickly goes away. A strong heavy taste begins to form as the hops begin to take over in your mouth, leaving you with a bitter and robust taste. The overall appearance is pretty dark for an IPA with a red hint to it.
This beer is a barley wine style IPA with lots of hops (400 lbs/1000 barrels) added to it.
Not bad, not bad at all....

When a huge stack of this showed up at John's Marketplace, and I got excited. I got a bottle for my pop-in-law as part of a big x-mas gift basket. I hadn't heard back from him how it was, so I decided to investigate. John's still had a stack.

The color, smell, and taste of it is very similar to a british bitter, maybe even an ESB. The head disipated quickly, and a dark amber liquid with a slight white ring around the glass remained. The smell was somewhat orange peely rather than the normal citrusy of a strong IPA. I should mention that I really liked this beer. It made my saliva glands run, and that's a good standard....

...ok, now that I'm most of the way through this beer, which is quite imperial at 10%, my opinion of it has become slightly more favorable. I'll stand by my initial ratings though.

Boxed in a wooded case. 750 ml brown magnum, no freshness date but it states that is a 2002 vintage on the label.

Appearance: Thin lacing that looks like battered soap suds … it at least sticks to the glass. Rustic reddish amber with a thick hazing.

Smell: Fruity with suggestions of vine ripe red grapes, plump peaches and tangerines. Faint woody aroma, ghost like vanilla and a thin wall of veggie hop.

Taste & Mouthfeel: Slick and creamy with a low amount of carbonation that provides no crispness. Thick medium body with a solid malt backing. Sweetness upfront of a fresh grain sweetness, almost of unfermented beer. A bulky hop presence slaps down an iron fist of flavour and an after sting of bitterness. Hops virtually take over from there only letting shades of yeast and fruitiness through. Some puckering woodiness from middle to end add a good measure of depth. Finishes with more hoppy and woody tones.

Drinkability & Notes: Some question that this is a Barleywine being that it is printed on other labels, I see this as a recreation of dead style … the real IPA. Aged in wood and touting a 10% abv. OUCH! The lack of carbonation was the only and biggest problem, other than that it was a wonderful brew.

As it sets in the glass, a obscure copper color, the head modest in size, the texture frothy, the color a light tan and it dissipates rather quickly leaving a patchy bit of lace upon the glass. Ah the sweet smell of malt, hops, and to me a bit of butterscotch also present, fresh and inviting is the nose. Ambrosial start, the top middling in its feel, the finish is minimally carbonated, the hops explode on the palate like a fourth of July sky rocket, dry as a desert bone aftertaste and quite a pleasant beer to quaff and one I think most “Hop Heads” will enjoy.

Pours nice amber that leans more toward brown since it's lacks the yellowish/orangish tints that make a true amber. The head was really hard to find no matter how hard I poured but doesn't really taste flat. The aroma is fairly sweet and lacks the hop presence you'd expect from a beer with this much hops in it. I occassionally catch slight whiffs of alcohol, but it's really wel covered. In the flavor the hops come out. The create a nice tongue tingle, don't have much of a citric character. More pine sap, but not overwhelmingly so. It's more just a big bitter that's a bit harsh. There is a nice malt under there, really good cookie dough stuff that struggles to hold it's own under the hop assault but only barely keeps its head above water. This is well brewed but unbalanced and would perhaps benefit from aging like the barley wine it claims to be on the back of its label.

Well, the bottle states that 400 lbs. of hops were used for the limited release of 100-barrels that were conditioned in oak casks.

Needless to say that there is a very strong hop presence in all aspects of the senses associated with beer drinking. The color of the beer is a transloucent amber. Not much head and not much lace to etch the sides of the glass. Decent beer, although, it only comes in 12 oz. bottles.