Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA

Brewed by Dogfish Head Brewery
Style: American Strong Ale
Milton, Delaware USA

Sample glass, RateBeer Southeastern Gathering. Tons of malt and hops in the aroma. Simply too beautiful and complex for me to describe in words here (read=late in the tasting, looking for another bottle). Nothing citric about the hop profile. Flavor is everything the aroma promised. Gorgeous amber-orange body. Heavy body, creamy/oily texture, lively carbonation. The bottom line is: I don’t know who brought this, but thank you so much; this is an awesome beer, plain and simple.

Re-rate. 12 oz bottle, snifter, 04 bottling. Not quite as aromatic as i first concluded (-1). Color is nice, but not as deep as previously indicate and the head diminished quickly with little lacing (-1). Flavor is a bit simpler than I remembered and the alcohol a bit strong (but still well hidden for 20%) (-1). Still a very nice mouthfeel. Overall is affected by the other decrements (-2). A tasty beer...just not top 10 material for me anymore.

Attractive, yet alcoholicly stinging aroma. Full hop aroma, exotic fruits. Touch of solvent. Big rich sweet malt. Huge, but doesn’t come across as very alcoholic at all, very surprising. Sweetness masks the alcohol quite well here. Doesn’t come across as overly hoppy. Dare I call a DFH beer elegant?

This is a huge beer. Aroma of hops with hints of malt. Sweet flavor mixed with a grassy citrus bitterness from the hops. Nice IPA or Strong Ale or just giant beer. I think I can drink a few of these in a sitting but then I after consistering how much alcohol is in it probably not. Cheers. Re-rate After drinking 4 or 5 of these over the last several months, the sweetness really start to destroy this one for me. More Hops please!

Great amber color too it and strong hoppy aroma. I was quite disappointed in the flavor. I found the sweet candy like inital taste to be too overpowering. The hops where present, but was covered the intial sweetness. A good beer too age.

$8.99 for a 12-ounce bottle! CRAZY!
Poured a dark amber with a huge,thick, creamy white head and sticky lacing. Clean, crisp aroma of pine and citrus. WOW! big flavor of ripe fruits, overly sweet malts. Alcohol is not overpowering but warms you up fast. One is enough.

I had this at the first public tasting, at a Michael Jackson beer event in Philadelphia on March 22. Beer had not been filtered and had not finished fermenting, so it was over-the-top yeasty, with strong sugar taste from unfermented residual sugar. Sam the brew master described it as "shock and awe" and, indeed, a 20% ABV IPA has some elements of both. I would describe the beer as too sweet, too strong, too hoppy, and too yeasty — in other words, just about perfect. A lot like a sweet cloudy yeasty silver desert sake, but with lots of hops. I loved it but will need to rerate it when it is finished, fined, and released. Will be available in big corked bottles. gotta have it. // I got a case of the bottles and opened one last night. Alcohol and bubblegum and sugar. Everything else ... including the enormous effort at hoppiness ... disappears under the taste of cough syrup. Does not even have the figgy fruitiness of Old School. How did fining it up for the bottle eliminate so much wonderful complexity? I'll try it again in three or four months.

12 oz bottle

This was shared with hezron and malachi and there was still about a quarter of a bottle left. I was pretty disappointed to find this an alcoholic mess. I would expect the booziness baased on the ABV but that was pretty much all there was. If ever there was such thing as an imperial malt liquor this would qualify. I’d like to give it a try with a fresh bottle to see how much the hops have settled. However even a year old bottle like this one should not be so one-dimensional.

Aroma / Appearance - A one finger bubbly head protected mild carbonation and a rose gold colored body. Thick clear lacing clung to the sides as one would expect from something that is 40 proof. A hint of hops is left but this is dominated by esters. It’s not quite as boozy as I was expecting but it still packs quite the punch. If given a blind sample I might call it a very strong barleywine.

Flavor / Palate - The mouthfeel is cloying and syruppy sweet. Any expectation of complexity was immediately stripped by the way it coated every corner of the mouth. There were still a fair amount of hops even after 18 months. It didn’t assault the senses like a fresh 90 minute but I think even that would lose something with aging. Caramel, honey and melon play against a sugary butterscotch taste. For such a strong beer it is oddly sippable. Dispite that I find myself underinterested in finishing it. This is one I’m not likely to buy again especially at $8.99 a bottle. While I understand the need to charge so much for a single bottle I will not be a repeat customer.

I’ll be honest: I had this before and was impressed, but this time around it felt like a hot, sticky mess. Some hops in there, for sure, and a bit of fruit somewhere in there. But this bright hazy orange pour with an off-white head smelled sweet and cloying as much as it smelled hoppy and floral; more so, really. A shit-ton of alcohol and sugars on the palate. Lots of burn. A novelty, but not so much an enjoyable experience. Yikes.