Coronado Brewing Red Devil

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Had on tap dry hopped w simcoe and Amarillo hops. Nice strong red. Caramel malts, underlying chocolate and obviously a healthy dose of hops and alcohol. Bittersweet finish.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Sampled April 2009
A vigorous pour produces a large, four-finger thick, darkish tan colored head with amber notes. The beer is a dark amber color that shows a brilliantly clear, dark cherry color when held up to the light. The aroma is quite noticeably hoppy with a citrus-sap character to it, lots of lychee aromatics, candied citrus notes, solid grapefruit peel aromatics as well as a strong malt character that consists of caramelized toasted malt, a touch of sweet tea, biscuit notes, crushed whole grain crackers and a touch of a metallic note in the finish. The hop character also contributes a pine-sap edge to the nose that mixes in quite well with the fruitier hop notes. As I adjust to the aroma I start to actually get a touch of roasted character in the nose.

The beer is thick and chewy feeling as it rests on my tongue and it has lots of caramelized notes that make this beer taste sweet. It is not cloying though as it is balanced well by herbal and pine flavors as well as a touch of burnt grain flavors towards the finish (this last is a bit more prominent than it was in the nose). This beer is not aggressively bitter, but does have a bite to it at times. It can also have a green hop, herbal astringency to it at times in the finish. The texture of this beer is easily approaching Barleywine territory; viscous, chewy and with a full mouthfeel, but it doesn’t really get syrupy, which is good. There seems to be a touch of butterscotch to the flavor too, though this is pretty subtle.

This is a nice beer, the heavy crystal malt character is spot on for the style, but doesn’t really do all that much for me. I would have doubled the base malt and hops, but left the character / specialty grain bill the same level as in the regular version of this amber beer. Still this is pretty tasty and enjoyable and was certainly worth a try.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Bottle from doubleo. Pours a wonderfully deep and dark even cloudy full orange amber to ruby, nice off-white to orangey/peachy colored head, great retention, solid lacing. The aroma was wonderful, caramel and piney hops, light citrus. The flavor followed the aroma, this thing was quite nice. The description called out hints of chocolate, not sure I got that, but there was a faint nuttiness and even spiceyness to it all. Very well done strong brew (couldn't believe it was 10pct, though), solid stuff. This thing needs to be rated higher, full hearty mouthfeel. Thanks, Kyle!