Founders Devil Dancer Triple IPA

Brewed by Founders Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Grand Rapids, Michigan USA

Toasted golden body with moderate viscosity and a slow fading dusty white head. Aroma of ethanol fuel, honey tones, light toast, and suprisingly subdued hops. Flavor is medium sweet with firm, but not severe, balancing bitterness. Aromatic hop profile is rather earthy and doesn’t really shine. A big, dense DIPA, or should I say TIPA? Enjoyable... like a concentrated IPA that has faded a bit. New to the local market, so I would expect a fresher bouquet of hops here.

(Big thanks to beltley78 for sharing this bottle) As jaggedly bitter as a beer can be. Contrasted by a big candy like sweetness. While the malt is sticky, it also has a distinct biscuity dryness keeping it from becoming cloying. Sweet malt blends effortlessly into big floral, citrus hop character. Tangerine. The hop-malt team create a nice cherry flavor as well. The flavors still need time to really mesh and find a way to work together, though. Unfortunately, time will also dull the hops that make this beer as intense as it is. Still, I’d be happy to drink this at any age.

2007 12oz bottle. sampled from a very recently bottled vintage. pours dense hazy red with small off-white head. nose is bursting with grassy and grapefruity hops while the malt/sugars isn’t going to let you ignore the huge caramel and cotton candy causing 13%abv. other aroma notes are bubblegum and some alcohol too. flavor notes of grapefruits, cotton candy, brown sugar, and caramel. finish is long and sweet. alcohol is very well hidden, i can’t believe it’s 13%. this beer is massive but in an insane way it’s actually balanced quite well. to bad it was a little to much for me to finish.7/4/7/4/14=3.6.

12/5/07, early 2006 bottle, aged close to 2 years now. pours dense caramel color with no head. nose has cotton candy, caramel, tobacco, and citrus. flavors are still quite bitter with some piney and grapefruit hops notes but the hops have really dropped off from what it once was, there’s some nice aged malt notes of tobacco, along with some cotton candy and caramel. I really like how this has aged but most Founders beers don’t hold up after a few years and I think any longer the hop flavors will be mostly gone. no signs of 13% but it was well hidden when it was fresh. I like this beer with the hops toned down a bit as I thought they were too brash and unbalanced when fresh.8/4/8/4/16=4.0.

2/24/08, sampled another bottle from an early 2006 batch and this one seemed a bit too oxidized and vegetal but i still thought the hops added nice bitterness to the aged malt even though others said it was way past its prime, whatever, it was tasty.3.8.

Bottled. Deep orange/brown.. small rapidly disappearing head. Mega hops jumps out in both aroma and flavor. Bitter finish with enjoyable lengthy aftertaste. Alcohol hidden very well. Nice Imperial IPA.

whoa bitter. this had some aromas of hay and dirty socks with some apple, rye, whisley, clovers, parsley, and burnt hops. this was so bitter it was hard to drink. but still enjoyable. lots of grassy and earthy kinds of hops and malts.

Dark orange in colour with a bit of haze. Booze and citrus fruit are the most apparent aromas, along with notes of grassy hops and a bit of toasted malts. About as heavy in the mouth as you’d expect from a 13% beer, which is to say "it’s pretty heavy". Loads of fat pale malt flavors without a lot of caramel character. Some notes of vanilla cream chocolates, oranges, black pepper, earth, and some alcohol heat. Not nearly as hoppy or bitter as advertized. This is a pretty mellow and vaguely syrupy beer. This is more like barleywine than a double IPA in my opinion, and not really a very good one at that.

Matt, thank you for letting me in on this special 4 pack. This beer did not disappoint on the price tag. Wonderful flavor and the hoppiness wasn’t not over powering but it was very strong. Give me another.

Bottle from Ross. Thanks! Pours a dark orange amber with hardly any head retention. Smell is sweet and malty, with hops definitely present, but kind of taking a backseat to the heavy booze and sweet, caramelly malt flavors. A little reminiscent of DFH Burton Baton in both taste and smell. Flavor is equally explosive with alcohol, especially as it warms, and the hops seem to get lost in big malt punch. I wouldnt go as far as to call this a barleywine, but it certainly shares some of its characteristics. Not sure how fresh this bottle was, but I would like to try one I know is fresh and see if it tastes any different. A year ago I may have really loved this, but last night it was just too much, too fast. And I was drinking it slowly.