Great Divide Hercules Double IPA

Brewed by Great Divide Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Denver, Colorado USA

Serve in Snifter, Tulip

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22 oz bottle: Full off-white ‘holey’ head – intriguing lace. Beautiful & enticing caramel pine-hop aroma, so soft it puts the mind into a dream trace…clear bronze. Deep pine flaovurs – sticky sap, gooey caramel & sweet resin with a long hop flower bite in the finish. Amazing – this really is a session double IPA? Creamy & smooth palate. The finish is a mix of great bitterness & herbal qualities…what a beer!

BIG peach smell as it warms. Also the requisite hop aromas--the resin seems to predominate over the grapefruit. Wierd there. Sweet and biscuity malts. Peach and grapfruit fight to the finish in a soft, sloshing fuzzy-full mouthfeel. Woo. This is very interesting. Finishes a tad too bitter for me, but SEE! SEE! Not all hoppy beers disgust me. Ma, look--I like an IIPA! The last beer of the NJ gathering, I drank this in the car and savored it before taking a little nap and heading home. Thanks Mike!

Rich copper. Caked-on dusty-white spackled foam. Rounded citrus scents intertwined with pine sap and peach. Hints of fir, hop leaves, and jellied/lightly toasted malts. Plush and sappy on the palate with thick, creamy bubbles. Hops unleash their intense spiciness with tongue-numbing hop resin chased by a softening peach flavor. Plush pine coats the palate and yields an abundance of raw cane sugar, which beautifully highlights the rounder citrusy hop nuances. Well-structured toasted malt anchor. Pine and raw cane sugar continue with their brashness and become fatiguing by the end of the first glass. Finishes medicinal and oversweet, yet packed with enough juicy hops, toasted malt, and sweet graham to briefly allow the softer hop elements to come through. Jellied malts and citrus notes linger before an ensuing, albeit restrained, mixture of piney/citrusy hop belches. Overall a very nice mouthfeel and enough interesting hop flavors to keep your attention, but the alcohol and sugary sweetness are distracting. Another Double IPA which is muddled, due to the full assortment of hops used. Still I’d gladly buy it again to satiate a massive hop fix.

damn, believe what people say, this is a great iipa. it doesnt stand a chance when compared to dreadnaut, but not many do stand that chance. poured dark red color with a small head. taste is very bitter hop oil, pine and grapefruit. what makes this a really good iipa is the massive amount of malts that make it balanced and not so much just a hop attack. smell is similar to the taste. a very good iipa. thanks for this one over and over again brian.

Light amber color with a beige head. Strong grapefruit and pine aroma. Flavor is almost all hops, with just enough malt to give it a little balance. Finish is very long and bitter.

UPDATED: JUL 22, 2005 Monster hoppy nose. I mean, the aromas just ERUPT out of this like a Hop Mushroom cloud. Lots of pine tar and grapefruit along with some crystal malt. The body was outstanding too. Big hoppy/ oily resin throughout, along with a rather large amount of malty sweetness. Long oily finish with undertones of wood and pine. My only beef is that it was just ever so sweet or malty, but the hop profile is world class.

oooooh, now this is my kind of brew!! Copper orange, light tan head with lacing that sinks down the sides like a setting sun. Aroma is super fruity citrus hops - pow! Thick bodied - sure, there’s malts, but who gives a c$%p about the malts!?!?!? (they are thick and sweet - kind of like a lozenge) This is about the hops, dude! Can hops provide balance to each other? We’ve got here citrusy grapefruit, lemon-lime, sure apricots (it’s funny - somebody at work gave me a handful of fresh dried apricots today; so yes, I recognize some apricot here), pine sap, oak, and many more hop flavors. Very nice stuff.

UPDATED: JUN 17, 2006 July 2004: 22 oz bottle, from Armanetti’s in Mundelein, IL. Luminescent copper, very clear, with a large, lasting taupe head. Nose is quite sweet, pineapple predominating with hints of apricots, caramel and tobacco. In the mouth, massively hoppy and bitter, fruits are present as a thin backup to the huge citric/piney hop front, which dominates all the way through the long hard finish. The body is good and thick, and I do find more malt presence than some, but on the whole I think this is a bit overbalanced to the hop to be really drinkable. It’s interesting, extremely well made, but certainly for hopheads only. 8/4/7/4/15 3.8

June 2006: bottle from the same batch as above. At 2 years I was afraid the hops would be too far gone...I’m also interested to read my review above, as I’m increasingly more tolerant of hop-bombs as long as there is corresponding malt or fruit sweetness to counteract the corrosive bitterness; this example delivers in that regard. It’s definitely mellower and easier to drink now though there is a strong dry, somewhat ashy bitterness that resonates on the roof of the mouth for some time after swallowing; the aroma though seems to have opened up with vanilla and green tea leaves adding some nice complexities....quite lovely and I’m bumping this up a bit; I will have to try it again fresh soon, but this 2-year-old is certainly quite fine.

UPDATED: AUG 18, 2004 Unbelievably fruity (mango, pineapple) nose; richer than almost all other of this type of IPA or IIPA (similar to Ruination, to my nose). Intensely bitter, very little in the way of earthiness. Very creamy, as others have said. Nice darker reddish color. I can’t get to the cookie dough that so many others claim because of the super high bittering, but more importantly, the alcohol. Nice, but not my fave IIPA by any means.

Bottle. Reddish amber. Pretty much a typical west coast IPA and I don’t see why this is a top 50, especially when I’ve had lots of nice IPAs lately with malts in them that balance them out soooooo much better. Hop juice.