Hop Devil by Victory Brewing Company

A frothy head though less aromatic than the Halcyon I tried earlier on today, (yes, it’s taken me a while to upload this review!) but boy does the first sip make up for that!

Hop Devil is bursting with flavour, whether or not that’s to your taste I can’t say. It’s not exactly balanced (overwhelmingly in favour of the hop heads) and is very complex – especially if you can wait for the lingering spices in the aftertaste.

Victory Brewery's Hop Devil is one hell of a beer

The hops are deep, man. They are more moorland heather than summer fields (perhaps prairie grass even?!). The malt really shines through and that’s something I personally like.  Combine this with deep, pungent spices and you have a lot going on, but you might not notice for the first half the bottle whilst you acclimatise to the intense, unapologetic hop character. The other elements will (well they did for me) seep out from this as you drink it, but for the at least my first few minutes this was a determinedly one track beer.

I recommend taking a short break mid way through this bottle as I did, particularly if you shoot out of the traps like a greyhound (as I also did). Alternatively take it slowly and allow the aftertaste to mature and blossom in your mouth, throwing new flavours with a ferocious nonchalance.

The spicyness and underlying maltiness simply will not leave your mouth alone. They say the fires of hell will burn for all eternity – well Hop Devil certainly practices this dogma!

Drink slowly to appreciate – but no matter how quickly you sup Hop Devil, I’m sure you’ll come away exclaiming that this really is a devil of a beer.

A good or a bad thing? … You decide