In the words of Green Day, "Welcome to Paradise."  Spring beers are in full bloom, the boys of summer are all over our state playing spring training games and March Madness is in full swing.  This is the time of year that we beer and sports geeks live for.  I settled down last Thursday early afternoon to watch the opening day of the NCAA tournament while drinking an amazing beer.

 Some of our stores were lucky enough to get an allocation of Bell's Hopslam. This is a very hard to find double IPA from our good friends in Michigan.  I was happy as a kid in a candy store when I saw a few cases roll into our Northlake Blvd store in Palm Beach Gardens.  At $17.99 a six pack, the price may seem a little high, but you can never pay too much when you buy quality and that is exactly what is packed into every bottle (on a side note, many guests have told me that our price is $4 less than the other stores are charging for this).  As many beer drinkers can see, our shelves are becoming full of high alcohol IPAs, but please do not mistake this beer as just another overly hopped, overpriced IPA. It is truly impressive.

This beer jumps out at you as soon as you open the bottle with an aroma of citrus and flowers that smack you in the face.  After carefully pouring a pint of this beer I slowly enjoyed my first sip and had only one impression: white grapefruit juice. I have never had an IPA with this much citrus going on in the glass.  Every sip became more and more intriguing with different flavors emerging as the beer opened up in the glass, and before I knew it, the glass was empty.

Luckily, my bracket was still intact and I have five more bottles of this in the fridge to savor.  If you happen to see this beer in one of our stores, jump on it.  I can promise you it will not be around for long.

Keep your glasses half full,

Evan