Great Lakes Nosferatu

Thanks to miketd for this great bonused beer!
Transluscent maroon colored pour with a yellowish-beige head. Smell is sweet, bright fresh hoppiness. Very nice. Taste is creamy and smooth at first sip with a nice big hop kick, mild bitterness, and ample malt backing. Tastes like slightly alcoholic hopped melted caramel squares. Unique, very drinkable, and just writing about it now makes me want the other I’ve got waiting for me. Nice beer all around and I can see upping it a notch or two on a rerate.

Deep dark clear coppery auburn color. Hmmm...remindes me of the color of that cleansing/prep liquid the surgeons use just before cutting you open. Coincidence? Castle-on-a-hill towering, fluffy, kinda crunchy topping of lightly parched yellow foam sits for eternity. Lots of big moth-holed sheeting lace is plastered like cob webs all over the glass. Some in the shape of bats!? Aroma is a hop hum dandy of toasted candy caramel, toasted grains, leafy crisp hops and a delicate natured little squeeze of grapefruity pine resin. And dare I say a bit of dampness of thick forest air seems to be lurking underneath. Must be the pine? Taste is yum, yum, suck the flavor from my tongue. Great hoppy taste with a finely bittered tone and snappy crunch to it. Bright, brittle, leafy, citrusy grapefruitified and resin loaded with light piney parchments. Wow! Quite a fun ride of goodness. The flavors really pop and are bright with a intensity of a vampires’ eyes. Just a bit of the toasted stuff makes its way through the fog of hops. As the hops play their part drenchingly deep of uncontested mastery and well-balanced, high toned, flavor sucking, palate quenching goodness! Body of the beer is crisp, lasting, and bright. Nothing a caped casket dweller would prefer, but damn suiting none-the-less as it fits the profile immaculately! Crunchy, snappy, hoppy, and superbly balanaced in the way a nice IPA would be. Surprising. Super clean finish with a dryish pine, citric, toastified fluffy bite on the palate. No turtle neck or stake needed here as its creamy, slick and oily backing is so drenchingly satisfying. If this were the nectar I needed to survive by sucking the necks of beautiful women or big brown bottles the world round then let it be so. This stuff’s better then blood any day, or night. Mmmaaaawww...HaaaaHaaa...

Pours an amazing deep amber color with hints of red throughout. The lightly colored tan head was well developed and lasted for a considerable amount of time. It had overwhelming aromas of pine, citrus, and spice. The initial taste was a blast of well rounded malts, a little spicey, with a slight toasty element and hints of caramel, while almost immediately the hop profile took over. The hops dominate for the last 90%, but the slight taste of alcohol near the end adds a slight burn common to IIPA’s. This was an amazing blend of insane amounts of hops, and a unique blend of malts. The alcohol is just right, at 8%, any more would take away from the perfect complexity. One of the best around

12 oz bottle. Pours a reddish amber, 1 cm tan head that is mostly diminishing. Aroma is hop dominated, citrus and a little spice. Initial taste is balanced between bitter hops and some indistinguishable malt flavors. Closing taste and aftertaste are both bitter with the amount of hops involved. Medium bodied, almost no carbonation. Hidden alcohol and drinkable. Might be the best offering from Great Lakes.

Bottle: Slightly hazy blood-like in color(no joke). Very earthy, vinous aroma with some light malt notes and a resin hop tone that comes through as it warms. Medium bodied mouth feel, pleasant floral and piney hops especially on the finish, and some caramelized fruits.

On tap at Map Room, Chicago. Was expecting to be blown away, but a little disappointed. Decent hop profile, but a little too bitter for my tastes. The bitters might help it stand out after a night of drinking- next time I’ll save it for the end.

This tasted like a woman’s menstrual blood!!! Is that a good thing you ask......well, you decide.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s my palate. Maybe the beer was past it’s prime or I got a bad bottle, but I didn’t care for this beer one bit. In fact, it reminded me in many ways of a really bad pumpkin beer, eventhough I don’t think there’s any pumpkin in it. The beer pours out an incredible dark copper/orange/brown hue with a medium sized biege head. To me the aroma was just too vegetative to squeeze anything else out. Flavors were more vegetative nastyness plus there was some off-caramel taste that really clashed with the veggie character of the beer. I will re-rate one day to get to the bottom of this mess.