Victory Brewing Company in Downington, PA

A while back (OK, a long time back now), Miles reviewed Victory Brewing Company’s Hop Devil IPA. I was the one who picked the beer up from the local store. I had fresh memories in my mind of an intense and flavorful IPA that was one of the better that I had ever tasted out of a pint glass, and naturally, I wanted everyone else to try it. When I came across a wonderful 22oz-er of it at the local market in Montana, I was as equally as pumped to try it as ever. But it was certainly not what I remembered. It was indeed a very nice IPA with a robust flavor profile, but it wasn’t the HOLY SHIT LET’S GET A SWIMMING POOL OF THIS AND DRINK IT FOREVVVVVVERRRR type beer I’d remembered it being. But yesterday, I sat down at a local bookstore/bar for a happy hour and some reading and the bar’s special selection was a pint of Victory’s Hop Wallop IPA. Based on my 50-50 views of Hop Devil, I was hoping that a beer called freakin’ Hop Wallop would floor me like I was expecting. Well, it certainly floored me but not in the best way possible.

Pouring a rather luscious, unfiltered batch of muddied golden sunlight, the Hop Wallop IPA looked like an IPA that really did pack quite a punch. The smell was a bit of a letdown, though, with just a tickling of floral hops traipsing over the olfactory sense. Even so, it was the color that convinced me that I was in for a literal hop wallop, and that is definitely what I got. With one sip, you get rocked back into your seat with the expected bitterness, but with an absolute tsunami of hop flavor that hangs, and hangs, and hangs, and eventually falls off into a grave of mind-numbing, floral-citrus flavor. I swear, you can feel the flavor in the back of your head. I waited a bit before delving into another sip, thinking the temperature the beer was served at was a little cold for the flavors caught inside the brew but even after a subtle warming, that deluge of hop flavor still dominated the beer before cresting and going into a rounder and less intense hop flavor. It took a full glass before I realized that this was it–it was a hop wallop and nothing else.

I might be getting spoiled with all the fully-rounded and multi-faceted dark beers I’ve been delving into lately, but the Hop Wallop was an intense experience of flavor and definition; however, it wasn’t a whole lot more than just shock value. If you are a true hop-head, then this beer might be for you. But as far as my tastes are going right now, I’d like some other subtleties and fluctuations to marry in with the intense hop flavor to give me a beer I’d really write home about. Would I get this again? I like to think so, but mainly for the chance I might be able to discern another flavor characteristic next time. Or say I’m in the mood for a good walloping. Hop style.