Hoptimum praise

This years was fantastic! Try their Bigfoot barley wine if you can. So good!

 

Just had some for the first time last night. Another excellent beer from an amazing brewery.

 

This is reason enough to spend 0.50 to 1.00$ more on a four pack with the local guy. I hope you have access to such.

 

I work about 5 minutes from the TW in Clearwater, and live less than 10 minutes from the TW in St. Pete. I'd love to give some of my business to the mom & pop, but I'm not going to drive all over town to do it. <sighs>

 

Ha

Had my 1st Hoptimim today. All I can say is WOW!!!

 

I second that! What a great beer.

 

Yup, I'm in the same boat on this beer. First time ever having it this year, went off and got half a case as a result. Perfect amount of sweet malt on the back of the hops, just like I like from my Hopslam. And that 10.4% makes it easier to deal with that I put myself back on strict dieting and will only be doing a brew a night for the foreseeable future.

 

Awesome beer, probably going to get another 4 pack tomorrow. In a way it reminds me of 120 minute except a little less boozy and more drinkable, is that weird?

 

SN gets props from me for having a nice rotational series of Amazing beers at a great price. I like all 3. Hoptimum,Narwal and of course the legendary BIGFOOT!

Had my wife try Hoptimum and she was surprised at how smooth it was for the ABV.

 

I wish I could find some of this. Drove to Louisiana for beer and still couldnt find any

 

I guess I'll have to give this beer another try.
Had it when it first came out a couple years ago in the 24oz. bottle for $9, I really didn't care for it.

 

To preface, I just went through a decent amount of Heady and Pliny in the last couple of weeks; I thought trying a Hoptimum would be underwhelming after those two heavy-hitters, but it really impressed me. I'm not prepared to claim that Hoptimum is better than either, but I thought it certainly came extremely close to matching their quality--at least garnering a higher aggregate score of 93.

Does anyone else find this argument compelling? Do you think it it's because Hoptimum is spread across the country more evenly than the above beers?

 

I was underwhelmed. I was getting this super piney-soapy taste, i get the same taste in their torpedo ipa as well.

 

It's good but not amazing. The booze was pretty evident (I want to say more so than last year, but that would be such a BA cliché) but it's still good for what it is. I think I prefer Lagunitas Sucks.

 

93 seems about right to me.

 

It is hard to say that a beer rated a 93 is under rated.
93 is in the "Exceptional" category a Notch below "World Class"
In my opinion, that is where I would put it.
IT seems like that is where you rate it as well:

 

The wider the availability, the less appreciated the beer is going to be as far as beeradvocate.com is concerned.

 

With a 93, it doesn't seem underrated. Perhaps "under-hyped" is the word you're looking for.

I didn't like it at all though. Like AaronRogers said, it's got that soapy/piney thing going on. And it does taste a lot like Torpedo. I think a lot of the SN stuff has a smilar hop flavor to it - and whatever it is, I don't care for it.

 

Over the past few weeks, I've had the following DIPAs that were recent releases: Hoptimum, Double Trouble, and Lake Erie Monster. Price was all about the same (roughly $10/4-pack).

I really like all of them, but Hoptimum would rank third on this list. A little too one-dimensional in terms of bitterness (but still good). Lake Erie Monster was the most balanced (some might say "sweet", but not me).

But my favorite was Double Trouble...it and Hopslam seemed to have many similarities (except for the honey). I can't put my finger exactly what it is that really draws me to both Double Trouble & Hopslam, but to me, they are some incredible DIPAs. Maybe it's because they go down so easy...even with roughly a 9-10% ABV!

 

I havent had this years yet, but the past two years were great. I would put Pliny and Heady way ahead of it though, becasue of how hot Hoptimum is. Such a boozy IPA, but very good in its own right.