Harpoon Leviathan Imperial Rye

Brewed by Harpoon Brewery
Style: Specialty Grain
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Serve in Lager glass, Tumbler

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Clear honey colored with an inch of off-white head. Aroma has a mild caramel sweetness with faint dog. Taste is worty and a bit metallic with a high degree of grapefruity bitterness. $3/12oz

12oz bottle. Pours dark burgundy with a fluffy white head. Sweet candy sugar, rye and alcohol flavors. Not impressed with this one and not up to par with the others in the Leviathan series.

Bottle poured a clear orange amber with a lingering ring of amber foam. Aromas of rye, raisin, light carmel and light earthiness. Palate was medium bodied and smooth. Flavors of rye, earthiness, toffee and light raisin with a smooth moderatly bitter lingering rye finish.

In short: An extremely harsh and overall atrocious burgundy with too many problems to list them all
How: Bottle 12oz, consumed relatively fresh one month after purchase
The look: Clear copper-red body topped by a small beige head
In long: Nose is rather timid with straightforward notes of dried rye bread and light notes of nail polish remover. Taste is surprisingly harsh. This is like drinking shredded paper, crunchy dry unmalted rye cereals, melted barley candy and band-aids. And all that tied together with a mixture of cooking oil and rubbing alcohol. This is was some pretty nasty stuff, this had to be a bad bottle, but I won’t give this another try, no sir. This is not my first major disappointment from the Harpoon Leviathan, and the people at Harpoon should know I consider that revenge is a dish best served boiling hot and thrown directly in the face.

12 oz bottle. Pours a lovely deep copper/amber color with a 1/2" cream colored cap. Minimal lace. Aroma is candied fruit and rye bread. Taste is caramel malt, candied fruit, earhty hops and rye bread. Except for the rye aspect, very barleywinesqe. Full, warming palate with a warm bitter finish. Very nice.

Clear copper pour with white ring of head. Hoppy bitter spicy rye character. A little bit of alcohol heat. Very bitter finish. Rye is definitely a beer ingredient I can always do without, but this was still okay. wouldn’t really seek it out again though.

Bottle from Paula. Pours copper with a slight beige head. Rich malt aroma. Rye? Full bodied. Flavor is very rye. It’s mildly non-dry, but there’s enough hop and roast malt/rye to render it bitter. Seems nicely balanced, and it’s very tasty.

Pours a copper red color with slight haze and hardly any head. Aroma bit medcinal with some dark fruit notes. Flavor has almost a bockish character to it - very malty and heavy mouthfeel with some booziness to it, and some rye kick on the backend. Overall, decent, but not my favorite.

Date: August 01, 2011
Mode: Bottle
Source: Hop City, Atlanta
Appearance: clear dark amber, frothy beige head, sticky lace
Aroma: sweet caramel candy aroma, touch of vanilla
Flavor: sweet candied malt flavor, caramel sweetness, touch of peppery spicyness
Aroma: 6/10; Appearance: 7/10; Flavor: 7/10; Palate: 6/10; Overall: 13/20
Rating: 3.3/5.0
Drinkability: 8/10
Score: **+ /4

12oz bottle: Pours a clear deep copper amber with a stringy-lacing off-white head. Has a lightly sweet toasted caramel and rye nose with a touch of light fruity esters. Starts with decent fullness and chewy sweet nutty notes with some herbal earthy rye flavor and a touch of peppery bitterness before a drier, slightly warming finish. Could use a little more hop flavor, but a fairly unique brew.