Hair of the Dog Blue Dot Double IPA

Brewed by Hair of the Dog Brewing Company
Style: Imperial/Double IPA
Portland, Oregon USA

Numerous bottles from 11026. Dark golden orange. Hazy, with minimal off-white head made of tiny bubble carbonation. Decent spotty lacing. Nice zesty bite up front, combination of orange and grapefruit. Huge caramel background. Flavor all hop zest up front, orange, pine and less grapefruit than aroma indicates. Some light malty sweetness through the middle to help balance, fades back to hop bitterness in the finish. Huge hop belches. Residuel hop flavor lasts quite awhile. Could use some more malt IMO. Still a nice brew regardless.

(Bottle) Pours hazy orange. Very piny, grapefruity aroma with fruity, soapy, spicy and malty undertones. Maybe a tiny touch of flowers. Strong grapefruit flavour with a medium malty body and a full afterbitterness. Fruity and piny undertones. A bit acid-ish and really dryish. Some fresh broken wood in both the flavour and in the nose. A nice one.

Bottle from cbkschubert. Thanks Craig for another great hook up! Loud fizz and good aroma, very hoppy smell. Pours a huge head that got to be like a little science experiment. Very pale/orangey look, clear with decent head and ring. Good flavor and very hoppy. Tastes somewhat similar to doggieclaws. Very smooth and very well balanced. Great brew although different than any IIPA I’ve ever had. Cheers!

Sampled at Hellbilly’s Hellraiser II. Bomber. Pours a cloudy gold with minimal head. Nose is floral hops, malt and pine needles. Palate is grapefruit with a resin finish. Looks and tastes like fresh squeezed yellow grapefruit juice. Medium mouth feel – good stuff.

Bottle from footbalm shared with Paul and Tom this past Sunday 9/2/07. Poured a cloudy, hazy, golden yellow with a pillowy, small bubbled, white head. Nose is very perfumey with traces of the fresh resinous hops that once existed in this now about a year old ipa. Flavor is still full of tropical fruits, a little citrus, and some good malty flavors as well. Smooth mouthfeel with a slightly bitter finish. Pretty good, but I will be seeking out a fresh bottle next time this is produced.

On tap at the Hop Devil Grill. Poured into a 1/2 pint glass. Right away - PEACH. An amazing fruit aroma akin to fresh sweet peaches. Cloudy dark yellow color, lots of luminance but cannot see through the beer. Mouthfeel is amazing, a beer version of silk. This is the only 5 I have given out for palate. Its as if the beer evaporated in my mouth. Felt great on the tongue. Leaves a faint soul of it self in my palate. What a great IIPA and unlike most others. Nowhere near the roughness of most IIPAs. Great balance and actual delicate flavors. 9/4/8/5/18

Rerate: 06/05/07 from 22oz bomber (from either Chriso_420 or Wolfhs, I got one from each, thanks). Opened it at the Heavyweight Open House. The bottle is definitely a bit different. The aroma is less all peach and more a blend of different tropical fruits. The mouthfeel is the most discernable difference. A bit more carbonated, definitely felt the bubbles on the cheeks more. The score goes down just a bit.8/4/8/4/18.

rerate: Year plus old bottle. A little bit of an experiment to see what would happen. Cellared for about 6 months, closest stored then for another 6 months and been in the fridge for the last 2 months or so. Very worried that this beer would have gone completely to crap now but it actually developed rather nicely. Poured with a large head and still that beautiful shade of orange (earlier description of color was in a dark bar so it was off a bit). Overall the beer still has this tropical fruit presence and I would say its heavy apricot now. Part of that is the malt is nicely present there creating apricot and biscuit, which equate to a heavy/looming apricot flavor. Its still noticeably hoppy, nothing in the way of the young bottle but you would give this to most people and they would scream IPA for sure. Enough heft in the body with the strong carbonation creates a nice mouthfeel.8/4/7/4/17

(Bottle,shared by Beermouth, thanx) Huge head, hazy yellow. Has an overwhelming hop nose and not much else, trademark of the 2condhand IIPAs,; thinks it´s all about tons of hops. Gets rather thin , bare holds the carbonation, but, thank God, dosen´t fadeaway with that metallic feel to the palate.

From a 22 oz. blue capped brown bomber with a blurb along the left side of the bottle, sampled at a cooler cellar temperature in a goblet. Poured a cloudy, dull golden hued orange with a foamy white head that settled into a thin lacing, minimal amount of sticking. A nice DIPA aromas, grapefruit, oranges, whiffs of pine and honey, and a spicy rye malt. Good, even carbonation and a crisp, hop textured and slightly slick, smooth medium bodied mouthfeel. Delicious tasting, grapefruit mixed with orange zestiness, a light lemon and only hints of pine at first, a soft hop bitterness, not a taste bud killer, all balanced by spicy rye breadiness, a nice rye malt backbone with touches of honey sweetness, the alcohol is well masked and only emerges slightly towards the end, and a dryish pine and rye bready finish, good DIPA drinkability, very quaffable. Has a rye malts backbone instead of the usual caramel, so it has that tasty Hair of the Dog kink, unique and well worth trying.