Beer Review: Weyerbacher Unfiltered Double Simcoe IPA

In a fairly recent Beer Advocate review of Boulevard Brewing Double Wide IPA, I noted that more Double IPAs should be offered in Bottle Conditioned corked and caged bottles. It just makes them that much more tasty! I have to think that just maybe someone at Weyerbacher stumbled upon my review because just a few weeks later they announced that they would be doing a limited release of an unfiltered version of their Double Simcoe IPA, which is brewed using only Simcoe hops. I have been a fan of this beer for several years, but had not had it in while, so I was anxious to see what bottle conditioning does to it. I poured the beer into a Duvel snifter a nice hazy dark amber with a very frothy abundant light tan head. I had to wait and let the head die down and then top it off again, and even then, the head lasted nicely. Aroma was a decent amount of nicely balanced pine hops and caramel hops. The taste was a wonderful abundance of pine hops and burnt caramel malts with a nice touch of yeast all blending together very well and leaving a nice bitter but smooth finish, absolutely exceptional! The beer is certainly on the heavy side with a decent amount of sticky alcohol, but it is matched nicely with a smooth slight dryness and decent carbonation that makes it fairly tolerable. Overall, this is certainly a huge step up for an already very special beer. I have to beg Weyerbacher to not just leave this as a limited release, retire the filtered version and just release it like this from now on! In fact, I would hope that many other breweries that brew tasty Double IPAs; Victory, Bell's, Moylan's, Avery, Great Divide, and numerous others, please follow suit, at least do a limited release of your Double IPAs unfiltered in corked and caged bottles!