I have no way of knowing if the brewers at Hopworks meant to evoke Motorhead when they made the Ace of Spades but because I love heavy metal I’m going to pretend. (As it turns out, they did! YAAAY!)
The fact is; this beers has a serious hopiness to it. They say they added hops at every point they could to this beer-but it doesn’t show. That’s a compliment though; the malts in this beer hold their own in a losing battle. Just enough to keep this from being a liquid hop cone but not nearly enough to call this beer balanced.
It’s possible the alcohol content helps the malt hold the line; at 9.5% this beer is a heater. The relevant point, I suppose, is that this beer comes at you hard and strong and while it finishes loud, when it’s over, it’s over.
So I dig it.
I don’t know if the man himself would like it-he’s a Jack Daniels fan from all reports but I have a feeling he’d be hard pressed to resist a pint of this. Hell, add it to the JD and have a hell of a Boilermaker. Cheers.
A pint for Dionysus 