Beer Rant 120 min IPA

Well given that the Washington Brewers Festival is this weekend, I set myself in fine beer drinking gear weeks ago. Last weekend was my birthday, my friend Brooke, cousin John, and myself sat down to share a very special beer I haven't had in quite a while. To properly illustrate the effects of this beer both phsychologically and physically, I'm going to start off with a wonderful non-fiction story about my first encounter with it. I was in Tacoma Boys beer section when I spied a Dogfish Head 120 min. IPA. As you can read from yet another one of my wonderful photographs, it calls itself, "The Imperial IPA." Now it comes in your standard beer bottle, not a 22oz, or any other kind of mega-bottle. Nope just a plain ordinary size beer bottle, and although I did expect it to be quite a heavy beer I really had no idea what I was in for. So I sat down to a quick dinner then proceeded to drink this ordinary bottle, and oh about 15 minutes later I was stumbling all over my house knocking over bits of furniture here and there, basically acting like the drunken bafoon I had accidentally morphed into. The cause of this? Dogfish Head 120 min. IPA is 21% alcohol per volume!! I'll repeat that 21% alcohol, for all you wine drinkers check your bottle it's pretty rare to find any of that type of alcoholic beverage coming close to that percentage. Yes for all my smarts, all my know how, I was fooled by the mere size of a bottle. The taste of this beer is ultra smooth, with only a small tinge of hop taste to it. This beer is so hopped up, that it has broken through to the realm of barleywine flavor. And a great flavor it is! There are many people who find this beer almost unbearable, there is also a certain percentage who love the sweet smooth taste that a heavy style ale like this presents. It takes one hell of a beer to subdue the extreme hoppiness of the standard IPA, but this does the job handily. Dogfish Head 120 min. IPA is probably the only true balanced IPA you can get, the shere alcohol content enables the sweet flavor to stand toe to toe with the hoppy flavor. The smell is something resembling a mix of honeysuckle, and hop, not bad for a beer lover like myself, and definitely worth a drink from the snifter. Watch out though, the initial wif can knock you down almost as much as drinking the thing. The name, well it certainly does live up to the moniker of, "The Imperial IPA." My brave selective panel received the beverage to much delight, only one other who wanted some missed out, sorry dad maybe next time, be happy in knowing that the three of us were more than enthralled with the entire tasting experience. So if you have some spare time, and preferably some friends to help lift a little of the burden from this beast of a beer, Dogfish Head 120 min. IPA is something that should be done at least once in every good beer drinkers lifetime.