Founders says:
“When you dance with the Devil the Devil don’t change. You do. Massive in complexity, the huge malt character balances the insane amount of alphas used to create it. At an incredible 112 IBU’s it’s dry-hopped with a combination of ten hop varieties. This one can age with the best of them.”
Founders Devil Dancer
Imperial IPA, 12% ABV
Sayeth the Guys:
(Editors Note) We here it Guys Drinking Beer occasionally like to push the envelope of beer cellaring. Double IPA’s aren’t traditionally good candidates for the cellar. They are brewed to be puckeringly hoppy and, thus, designed to be enjoyed that way. But we thought it would be a fun experiment to see what happens to an overly hopped, high alcohol content IPA when it sits in the cellar for a year or more. Below are the tasting notes for Founders Devil Dancer after one year and two years in the cellar.
1 YEAR
Andrew: As you undoubtedly saw in our Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree IPA side-by-side we like to take a somewhat unconventional approach by cellaring beers that aren’t typically cellared. In this installment we put the 2009 Founder’s Devil Dancer up with the 2010 Founder’s Devil Dancer.
Karl: This faceoff was right on the heels of the Batch 9000 and between the monster ABVs of all of these we probably powered down the equivalent of 4 regular beers in just about 8 ounces of fluid. These are the sacrifices we make for you, Constant Reader, and we are happy to do so. All of this is the long way of saying that while our minds were plenty clear at the beginning of two samples of Devil Dancer, after facing down a fresh and slightly aged version the 12% was already starting to show its effects. This one is a tall wall to climb, but climb we did.
The differences between the two are already clear (this is wordplay you’ll get in a second) as soon as the ‘09 and the ‘10 hit the glass. Not only does the ‘10 have a significantly larger amount of pillowy head to it, but it is slower to dissipate and leaves a tremendous amount of lacing around the glass. The ‘09 still has a decent amount of foam after the pour which surprised me for a year old hopbomb but dissipated quicker than the newer Devil Dancer and left nearly no trace of its existence.
As for the color and consistency (here comes the wordplay) one is cloudy and nearly opaque, and the other is crisp and basically transparent except for the color, which in both was a similar ruddy dark copper. After a bit of poking around with it, you can see how different the two have become in just 12 months of being laid back.
Put the pen behind the ‘09 and it practically disappears. Behind the ‘10? Yep, there it is.
Tastewise, as hoppy beers age, the bitterness dissolves and leaves behind some interesting stuff – which we are still waiting to find since the ‘09 was still just as hoppy as your average DIPA. It’s less thick in consistency than a Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree, for instance, but it’s very similar otherwise. The ‘10 was even hoppier, which was a given, but the aromatics like citrus and pine were still right up front while they had died down almost completely in the ‘09. I would even go so far as to say that the ‘10 was so hoppy it was medicinal. It was a struggle to put down that ‘10, as it was nearly too intense for human consumption (not that it stopped us in the end) but the ‘09 was delightful. Advantage: ‘09, overall.
I really look forward to seeing what this is like in another year or three – although I’d bet it’d take that long to progress just to a single IPA level. Founders should make you sign a waver on purchase with this one. Caution: Obscene Levels of Hops, Proceed With Caution.
Ryan: I’ve described Founders Devil Dancer in a number of different ways – “Hop bomb”, “hop monster”, “palate destroyer”, “I can’t feel my teeth.” But I never thought I would call it a…double IPA. Strangely, that’s the conclusion I reached after our little side-by-side experiment pitting a fresh bottle of DD against one that has spent a year in the cellar. We have done this before with both Dark Horse’s Double Crooked Tree and Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA. In both those instances the double IPA started to fade into more of an English barleywine or American barleywine, respectively. The Devil Dancer though just dropped a notch – going from a freakishly hoppy TRIPLE IPA to a pretty damn good double IPA.
Both beers poured an attractive orange in color with the ’09, as noted above, much cloudier than the 2010 pour. The ’09 also left zero lacing behind.
The ’09 still contained a good hop bouquet in the nose – much more than I was anticipating – although subdued from the ’10. The fresh bottle just fills your nose with bitter, angry, citrusy hops.
The ’09 pour still had a good amount of hops in the taste. Far less abrasive than the ’10 – but still very pronounced. In fact, I would put a year old bottle of this up against just about any fresh double IPA in a blind taste test. I bet you might like this better. Oh, and before i forget, I also caught a little tangerine in the back end of this beer. Tasty.
The ’10, while very enjoyable, will just wreak havoc on your palate. Andrew was right, do not expect to taste much after drinking one of these. Aside from the puckering hops, a fresh pour is highlighted by freshly cut grapefruit blended with grapefruit juice with a side of grapefruit.
This may sound strange, but I may enjoy this more with a year on it. The EXTREME feeling you get from drinking something that is triple digit IBU’s is fun and all – but a year old bottle is far more drinkable.
2 YEARS
KARL: As aging experiments go, throwing a triple IPA back for a couple years has gotta be right up there in the WTF files. Last year we found it had dialed itself back to about a 1.5X IPA, as it were. So with another 12 months of aging behind us, would we find ourselves with a .75X IPA, or something even further removed from its original flavor?
It turns out you get a beer that is sweet, sugary, maple syrupy, thick and many other things that remind one of caramel. I even wrote that it resembled dulce de leche in some strange way. The hops had absolutely disappeared, leaving behind the framework that made up the base of the beer. It’s like peeling back the drywall of a building, and showing the 2x4s, the rebar and the concrete slab. It’s always been there – but now you can finally see it.
A 2-year-old Devil Dancer is like no beer you’ve ever had. I could think of nothing else this was like other than itself. It is an individual, a unique data point. There’s some afterburn to the finish, a little kick of dark spirits to close it out. It’s thick with complexity, charm and character. Who knew.
ANDREW: We’ve tried aging other IPAs in the past and have been pretty pleased with the results, so it should come as no surprise that a Devil Dancer with two years on it worked. It just worked. Looking back, it’s hard to put a label on what this beer had become – it certainly wasn’t a triple IPA anymore, but was it an IPA or something else?
As Karl noted, this was one hell of a complex beer, just so much going on here. The malts had developed to totally take over this beer, leaving you with a sweet, syrupy beer. Yet the hops stick around just enough to remind you that this beer used to be a palate destroyer as it finishes with a very aggressive, dry bitter hop kick on the backend.
Please, cellar your IPAs, trust us, you won’t be disappointed.
RYAN: I am sure many, if not all of you, thought we were crazy for purposely putting some monstrously hopped IPA’s in to our cellar. Sometimes even I thought we were crazy for doing so. But boy has this experiment been paying off.
While the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, another cellaring experiment, still retained some IPA character after two years – this beer lost it’s identity all-together. Devil Dancer went from a menacing triple IPA to a malty, creamy ale that made its mark with a borderline overbearing sweetness and a boozy finish.
The nose of this beer is rather deceiving. You can still pick up a trace scent of hops; maybe some tangerine and grapefruit. It misleads you in to thinking that two years in the cellar really hasn’t done that much to this beer. It’s not until you take a sip that you realize this is a completely different animal.
Gone is the abrasive hoppiness; replaced by a huge malt bill that is heavy on the caramel. It’s morphed in to a beer that I could only describe as:
“super-sweet, borderline cloying…”
Sure, there are still some hop remnants on the finish – but at two years old this beer is all malt.
Probably the biggest surprise is the boozy burn on the finish. Actually, at 12% ABV it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that there was a bit of a burn. It was more the timing and intensity that caught me off guard. You really didn’t notice the alcohol until well after you took a sip. For arguments sake we’ll say 20-seconds. And the burn hung with you for a while too.
The heartburn-esque feeling aside, this beer truly is in a class by itself after two years in the cellar. Which makes the two other bottles we have for a three year and four year tasting that much more intriguing.
Two years ago three guys with a passion for beer brewed with the purest of ingredients (or at least not corn and rice) took to the interwebs to preach the gospel of craft beer. Today – they bring you beer reviews from their personal cellar, thoughts on hard to find Midwestern craft beers and act as a beacon for those who love both beer and politics.
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