Will Gordon says he heard forcefully from "nasty" Bell's fans when Oberon wasn't on a ranking of 24 American craft beers last spring.
Will Gordon, a Boston-area beer snob with a distaste for what he sees as overly defensive Bell's Brewery fans, would have enjoyed ripping the craft brewer's popular ale in a Deadspin review.
I wanted to call Bell's Two Hearted IPA overrated. The headline would have been so much fun to write!
And I could have told all sorts of irrelevant jokes about how Detroit's a hellhole and Michigan football sucks and tried to pass them off as having anything at all to do with a beer from Kalamazoo.
His pre-tasting bias, Gordon explains from Cambridge, Mass., arose because "I hear from Bell's loyalists every time I do a ranking listicle. . . . A lot of them are dicks." He also calls them another five-letter word: "nasty."
As it turns out, IPA samples shipped east mellowed his mood notably.
Alas, the Bell'sholes are right about this one. Two Hearted is fucking spectacular.
Gordon, the national site's "Drunksipin Daily" reviewer, compares the Kalamazoo ale to category leaders such as Firestone Walker Union Jack, Great Divide Titan and Goose Island.
Two-Hearted is definitely better balanced than its peers. The flavor is perfectly harmonious, with the malt present throughout, as the strong hops stop just short of over-asserting themselves. . . . . What really sets Two Hearted apart is a distinct strawberry note creeping in among the citrus and pine.
There's a ton going on in this beer, and I regret to inform you that the Bell's fanatics are correct. Two Hearted is among a small handful of the very finest IPAs in the world.
-- Alan Stamm
