Midnight Sun CoHoHo Imperial IPA

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 8

Beer 11 of my 12 Beers of Christmas. Brown amber pour, darker than most IIPAs, medium tight light tan head, beautiful tight lacing throughout. Honey malted aroma upfront straight into spruce and pine, actually juniper, subtle but distinct, more hops then more balance with malts. Great flavor: sweet honeyed malts meet big hops and junipers. Especially tasty as it warms. Big, hoppy, then fairly balanced for a big beer. Loved the flavoring in this beer. Great for winter. Beautiful beer.

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

imperial ipa with brown sugar, honey and juniper berries. 85 ibu. darker in appearance and better balanced, though the hops are lively and fresh. bottled 9/2010. honey is the main player, then brown sugar, with just a hint of the berries coming through. nice beer, but nice don't cut it at $12 a pop.

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

Aroma - for a IIPA, this sure does seem tame. The malts really take center stage in the aroma, honey...some brown sugar with a dose of floral hops.

Appearance - clear copper body, thick creamy cream colored head.

Taste - seems rather overlysweet and unfocused on the hops. Tropical fruits, caramel malts, brown sugar and some hidden pine shows up on the back end.

Overall - not bad, but reminded me more of a barelywine or a strong ale than an IIPA.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 4 | Flavor: 5 | Overall: 8

Bottle, home. An amber, reddish DIPA with a nice beige head. The aroma is mostly a pretty standard grapefruit hoppiness. There’s just a touch of sweet sugars and maybe some juniper, but I could be imagining that. The flavor is also a bit one-note - almost entirely hop bitterness. The beer is rather dry. I think that I’d like this beer more without the brown sugar and honey. The flavor is rather harsh, possibly the result of these simpler sugars. I had high hopes for this beer and come away fairly disappointed.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

Pours with a deep amber-red body topped by a thick, off-white head with a good amount of lacing. It’s slightly sweet and malty with a piney hoppy bitterness, a note of flowers and a slight metallic note. Full bodied, dry and a bit warming.

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

A dark orangey amber with a good head. There's a distinct spirits-soaked dried fruit smell in the aroma. There's a light caramel sweetness added to that in the flavor. The hops are surprisingly in the background, but there is a firm bitterness supporting it. The body is surprisingly thin and seems to weak to support the flavor. Perhaps a bit ragged.

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

Pours a nice orange color with an impressive white head. The head lasts and give way to decent lacing. Aroma is of a pine forest after a rainstorm. Taste is a fruity citrus twang with a hint of malt background. A bit too foamy and it makes it a bit hard to drink at first. Very easy to put a few of these away, nothing special but it is good. Overall, it is a good Imperial IPA, but only average.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Poured a dark amber color with a medium sized, off white head that left light lacing on the glass. ARoma of grassy and floral hops, pine, citrus, and light caramel malt. Taste of citrus fruits, caramel malt, a light nuttiness, and finishing with grapefruit bitterness. Big thanks to ClarkVV for hooking me up with this!

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

This brew pours a thick brownish copper pour. Decent cream colored head. Nose is all sappy,resiny pine. Flavor is slightly malty with a big pine forest hop presence. Balance is decent but seems to lack in complexity. Good but there are definitely better Imperial IPA's.

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

I was really excited to get a hold of this one -- the very last bottle at Hi Times Liquor in Costa Mesa (which might very well mean one of the last few bottles in Southern California, if I know my fellow SoCal BA beer-geeks!). Of course, $8.00 for a 22-oz bottle is a bit pricey, but all-in-all, this beer is well worth it!

Putting aside the fact that the label is energetic enough to cause epileptic seizures in even comatose paitents, this beer pours rather calmly, with a full finger or so of foam, with solid Belgian lace as things progress. Along with a nice earthy/hoppy aroma, things look good for this beer.

The flavor profile came off a bit heavy-handed at first, but then quickly calmed down as I got used to the rather bitingly-sharp interplay of alcohol and bitterness. In addition, there's a definate warming prescence that reminds you of the fact that this is meant to be a Christmas/Winter Beer. In fact, I can see how this would be the perfect beer during the wintertime in Alaska (that is to say, little to no sunlight for months on end), in that it's nice and warming, nicely bitter, and yet still inviting enough to share with family and friends.

More of a beefed-up Winter Warmer than Imperial/Double IPA, this is still an excellent beer, that I hope to sample again come Christmas. "Co-ho-ho", indeed!
//TB