Pizza Port Shark Attack Triple Red Ale

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

Phew!!! Incredible, love it... an incredibley delicious hopiness with a strong brown sugar, caramelly, chocolatey body goodiness to back it up... WOW!!! It definately bit me! Peeps, this is gold. better than the stock market.

This is one of my very favorites from Pizza Port. Reds aren’t supposed to be this hoppy. I am very glad it is. This stuff will grow hair on your nipples.

Pours an off-white head with legs and a hazy deep amber-brown. Smells of caramel, malt, strawberry, floral. Tastes of resin, floral hops, brown sugar, biscuit. Fruit aspect from the hops. Bitter and hot finish.

Sampled @ Strong Ale Fest San Diego

The beer pours a very dark red, almost brown color; the head was monstrous in size, creamy in texture and a beauteous light tan color with a thick sheet of lace to obscure the glass. Large malt sweet nose, the aroma of hops also present, light toasted grains, citrus crisp and fresh, a real nose pleaser with the start rich in malt, sweet and the top moderate to full in feel. Finish is stern in its acidity, the hops potent but pleasing to the palate, a quite clean and thirst quenching brew, another that I sampled multiple times, as I like to say a “Real Hoot”!

Hazy and deep amber-red. Sharpish mouthfeel was "bitingly" good. Nice flavors and aromas of sweet orange and pine. Intense in many ways, but not over the top. All of its parts complemented each other wonderfully. Great beer! RERATE GABF ’06: Much better than I remembered (and it was pretty dang good before). Malts were rich and flavorful, with big caramel, Boston Baked Beans, ROAST, TOAST, caramel apple. Texture was fabulous, almost like a milkshake, with its rich smoothness. Very tasty and surprisingly balanced.

GABF2004... Poured a cloudy caramel color with a small off white head. Aroma was very sweet with fruity hops. Hoppy sweet malts with light bitterness.

A vigorous pour produces a two-finger thick, tan colored head in my 25cl tulip glass. The beer is a dark, plum colored, amber hue that shows a brilliantly clear, red color and a light carbonation when held up to the light. The aroma smells sweetly of hops as I am pouring this and a deeper inspection of the nose confirms this with ample hop notes of lychee, sweetened grapefruit, tangelo and expressive orange zest. It is really hard for me to smell anything but the hops; this is a bit surprising given the rich red hue, but luckily the hops are very nice smelling.

Sweet tasting and quite smooth feeling with its soft carbonation, towards the middle the beer starts to pick up a biting hop-bitterness that slowly grips the tongue and becomes very pronounced in the long finish. This is nicely balanced between the sweetness up front and the sharp, biting, slightly astringent bitterness that comes to dominate in the finish. The light carbonation adds just a faint tickle to the texture, just enough to keep this from feeling flat. While clearly dominated by citrus and fruit hop notes there is a certain spiciness to this brew that couples with an over that top bergamot-oil / über-citrus zest note up front; it s something like a mix of allspice, mint and hemp oil. This last is definitely noticeable and herbal, but plays a secondary role to the sweeter hop fruit notes.

The fantastically interesting spicy / herbal note that is noticeable, at times explosively, I think is actually partially due to the rich maltiness that is not really all that noticeable on its own. The hop character is just too huge here, but there is obviously a big malt character to this beer that more than anything serves as a vehicle for all of the hop flavors. This really hides its alcohol pretty well too, it really isn’t very boozy at all. Perhaps the alcohol is noticeable just a touch as it couples with the hop notes and provides a touch of pepper-like bite in the finish that melds with the bitterness. As the beer warms it becomes a bit more herbal, more hemp like even, but this only creates more of a balance between the competing hop notes of fruit and herb; the fruit still wins out, and decidedly so, but the other side of the hop coin is definitely an appreciated addition.

This is much nicer than I was expecting, for some reason I was expecting an unbalanced, scathing hop bomb. This is certainly an aggressively hop dominated beer, but there is enough malt to support the hops and keep them from getting overly aggressive or harsh. I really like the mix of hop flavors here; dominated by aromatic & expressive fruitiness, but with a slight backdrop of herbal & hemp oil flavors that is then tethered in the finish by an aggressive, clean, biting bitterness. Something about the slight carbonation & the mix of flavors already here tells me that this would be an absolutely phenomenal beer served via traditional cask & hand pump. There is something about this beer that just makes this really hit the spot right now; I am not sure if it is purely situational, palate driven or if this is just a phenomenal beer. No matter what it is I definitely am loving this beer right now.

Purchased: <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/ShowPlace.asp? Liquors, Tucson AZ

Bottle at Rudy’s tasting May ’08. Strong sticky malt / hoppy aroma. Ruby brown, good sized white head. Intense taste - so bitter and intensely malty. Perfect balance of strong hops and aggressive malt. Long bitter linger. Bordering on DIPA territory here, this one got everything right for me.