Heady Topper

This 8.0% ABV Double India Pale Ale is from The Alchemist of Waterbury, Vermont. It is currently the number one ranked beer on The Beer Advocate. The can describes it as not trying to be the biggest or most bitter, but rather to give wave after wave of hoppy goodness. The can warns: Drink From the Can! This is the opposite advice generally given for a quality beer, where pouring into a glass allows one to see the color and release the aromas.  The can explains that they don't want to release the hoppiness into the air, but rather save it all for your mouth. I am going to pour out a little, both to see the beer, and to compare from the glass and the can.

The beer pours a slightly hazy dark golden and orange in color with a finger of thick, foamy white head. The aroma is fruity, quite funky in a thick and hoppy way, pine, spicy, oranges, and melons. The taste is thick, resinous pine and funky dank weed to start, flipping quickly into a sweet fruitiness, with lots of orange, melon, and overripe tropical fruit, but without being super fruit forward either. The finish is quite bitter and dry. It tastes good out of the can, but it seems a shame to drink a beer like this when you are not smelling it at the same time (one of the main drawbacks of drinking from a can and not a glass).

Well, this is certainly a nice DIPA, but I think I would put Pliny the Elder ahead of it.