Dogfish

Sometime around New Years I decided to collect a batch of different Dogfish Head beers and give them all a try.  My main reason being that I really hadn't drank any Dogfish beers in a few years and I was a bit intrigued by the variety coming from them that I saw on the store shelves.  Plus I figured they deserved a fair shake and a slice of my liver.

This turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought.  Firstly, they've got a shit ton of different beers to choose from and finding them all at the same store was pretty much impossible.  Secondly, some of the beers are expensive and to try all of them would put a big dent in the wallet.  Lastly, most are strong beers so having more than one in a single session would be tough.  So this all wound up taking me about a month and visits to multiple different stores in the area.

End result is that I tried about 14 different beers.  Out of those there were 7 that I can honestly say I liked a lot and would spend the money on again.  3 that were good but not memorable and only 4 that I didn't really like at all.  The clunkers for me were Hellhound, Pearl Jam, Chateau Jiahu, and Raison D'Etra.  Hey to each his own let's move on.  Ta Henket, 90 min IPA, and Chicory Stout were beers that I thought okay but nothing I'd buy off the shelf again given the choices out there today.  The ones I liked in no particular order:

60 minute IPA.  I know, I know.  It's everyone's obvious choice.  The beer that I'm guessing pays a lot of the bills at Dogfish.  It's a great beer and very easy to drink.  I did have some of this years ago and forgot that I really liked it.  They've got it on tap at the local BBC and now it's one of my go to's when I'm there. 

My Antonia.  I guess you'd call this a Imperial Pilsener or something to that affect.  I like the name My Antonia better.  This is arguably my favorite of the whole lot.  Thanks go to my friend Aaron Bennett for providing some background atmosphere to our beer sampling.  It was a good New Years Eve.  We tried many beers including I think 3 Dogfish ones.

Probably the one that surprised me the most, since my expectations of it were low for some reason, was the Palo Santo Marron.  A dark, rich, strong brown ale that is aged in wooden vessels.  This is one of the new regular beers that you can get in a 6-pack or maybe just a 4-pak?  A wonderful beer that comes in at a whopping 12% but it's a dangerous 12 because you really can't tell that its quite that strong.  I could easily knock back 4-5 of these then realize after it was too late what I had done.

Sah'tea - I can't really even begin to describe this beer.  It's brewed with Juniper Berries and a whole slew of other ingredients and is a bit reminiscent of a weizen beer.  Well go figure it is fermented with a German Weizen yeast.   Too many flavors to get my head around but who cares I really enjoyed it and want to try it again so that's good enough for me.

Pangae - How can you really go wrong with a beer brewed with ginger?  Unless you don't like ginger for some strange reason.  Weird name for a beer though.  Pangae is one of  the map selections when you start a game of Civilization IV or V.  It's not a beer.  Whatever, I liked the beer a lot.  I bet some of the people in the Dogfish marketing department are a bunch of stuck up wine drinkers.  They're probably drinking a glass of Pinot Grigio right now while the come up with the next pretentious beer name.  Just saying.

Speaking of weird names the next two top the last.  Namaste and Theobroma.  Really?  What the fuck is that?!  This is beer we're talking about for cry eye!!  Well they are great beers anyhow.  The Namaste is a great summer beer and Theobroma is another weird recipe with things like Ancho Chilies (no idea what those are) and cocoa nibs  (what's a nib?).  Whatever it is it works though.  Two more lovely beers to round out my favorites list.

So there was recently a brouhahah over on the Beer Advocate forum about overrated breweries and Dogfish's name was brought up by a lot of the posters over there until Sam C. of Dogfish should up and gave them a smackdown.  Seriously though I really don't think Dogfish is overrated at all.  They're putting out a huge variety of beers and many of them are terrific beers.  If I had any complaint at all it's only that some of them are expensive but then again they're not beers that you'd be drinking all the time and a lot of these 22oz beers on the shelf these days are just as costly.  Overall I'm impressed and more importantly there are more than a handful that I want to drink again.

But now I can take a rest from Dogfish and move onto another brewery.  Jack's Abbey in Framingham up next.