Pizza Port Shark Attack Triple Red Ale

Brewed by Pizza Port (Solana Beach)
Style: American Strong Ale
Solana Beach, California USA

Sample from November 21, 2008 beer club meeting. Dirty brown/orange color with a weak head. Very hoppy. Fumes are beautiful! Malty, hoppy… the perfect blend between a double IPA and a, uh, something more English. I like very much!

<i>Bottled at Akkurat, Stockholm. </i> Hazy roast red, brief head. Strong aroma of perfumy lychee with estery alcohol and roasty malt undeneath. Fairlysweet with some vanilla, roasty bread with butteer, slivoic and good amounts of grapefruit and mango. Warming and potent, yet slim. the bitterness is kept at relaxed levels in a chocolatey finish.

I picked this up at the Sam’s in Downers Grove, IL. Interesting. I started out at Port Brewing in San Marcos and ended up at the Pizza Port in Solana Beach. Not only that, but my bottle of "Double Red Ale" at 9.0% ABV became a "Triple Red Ale" with a whopping increase to 9.2% ABV. I’d better rate this quickly afore something else changes! It pours a murky dark amber body with an off-white head and some pastey lacing. The aroma is a dirty caramel with a strong herbal/grassy/citric bitterness. The flavor is cleaner, the caramel sweetness more clear, but the hops, nice and bitter, have a confused mixture of tastes. The finish is a prolonged, soiled bitterness. Okay for a hop fix.

I ordered a bomber of this from Hi-Time Wine Cellars. Pours a deep reddish-amber color with hardly any head at all. The aroma is herbal with a blend of caramel malts and citrus hops, creating a nice scent. I was expecting this to be a hop heavy beer but that wasn’t the case at all. It is sweet tasting with lots of caramel malt and grapefruit hops with a hint of a dark fruit character. The sweet malts pretty much even out the hops. I thought this drank a lot like a barleywine. A little alcohol sting in the finish but overall this is rather light for the abv. Maybe a little too sweet and not what I was expecting but a pretty good beer. Not something I can drink too much of at one seating unless I’m really in the mood. Got halfway through the bomber... I think I might save the rest for another time if it holds up.

Muddy red-amber with fair, creamy, beige head / Strong, malty, hoppy nose / Full bodied, grainy and sweet, malty and hoppy, with long, dry finish / Flavors of caramel, brown sugar, and dry pine with chocolate and citrus notes / A triple ipa.

Bottle: poured dark amber with light tannish head. Smelled mostly of malt with some hops. Tasted much more malty then hoppy. Not a bad beer by any stretch just not what I prefer.

Got it at Binny’s Glen Ellen. Pretty excited to crush this one. Pours red, with a big tan head. Nose is a ton of great hops and some caramel. Flavor is hoppy, chocolatey, caramelly with a long, bitter finish. Awesome!

Bottle from Binny’s Lakeview. I think I’ve realized that these double reds with huge amounts of Crystal malt are not my cup of tea. Nose attacks you with biting caramel malts and big hops. The hops are well overpowered by the malts, however, which I consider a down fall. It is pretty, a nice deep red/brown. It’s an okay beer, but I’ll pass it up for wipeout next time.