#IPADay Two

So I realized a couple of things today while I did the 'R&D' for today's post. First, I regularly put 'drink beer' on my daily to-do list for work. It usually falls somewhere between the things I know I have to do, which get written down first, and the things that I remember later in the day that I had previously forgotten. It is always staring at me from the middle of the page. And speaking of pages the other thing I realized is that my printer-paper-photo-backgrounds are kinda hoopty. And not level. Need to do something about that.

Today is Day Two of my #IPADay week, and I'm featuring one of the more popular IPA's on the market: Dogfish Head's 60 Minute IPA. I'll start off with describing it instead of some back story because I only have a few sips left. Kinda forgot to save some while I did my research. Mainly because this beer is so good. I know that I always talk about how much I like IPAs, but this one really is really good. Really. It has the standard golden/orangish color with a good foamy head when you pour it, but there is something unique about this brew. Dogfish says that it is 'continually-hopped', which after looking into it I found to mean that they have 60 hop additions to the boil. Typical brews are made with by boiling the wort for 60 minutes (the homebrews, at least) and the guys at Dogfish add a little bit of hops every minute. What this does is gives you a complete hop profile in the beer. The progress of the taste goes through the bitter and aroma aspects of what I learned to be Warrior, Amarillo, and 'Mystery-Hop X' with a very seamless transition. This gives it a 'I can drink this all day' type of feel to it.

Dogfish Head has gotten a lot of notoriety in the past couple of years because of their presence in the media. They were featured on a Discovery Channel show called Brew Masters, and in the beer industry documentary called Beer Wars, by Anat Baron (available on netflix... if you haven't already cancelled your subscription.) I thoroughly enjoyed both of these and highly recommend looking into them. You'll get a great perspective on what it is like to be a craft brewer in a time where The Big Three literally control an insane amount of the market share. Lately I have been seeing things across the interwebs about Dogfish doing a bunch of collaborations with other notable craft brewers across the country.

All in all I think this was an important beer to feature due to Dogfish being a real leader in innovation and creativity in the craft beer world. They really are a company that is devoted to pushing the envelope when it comes to beer, and are not afraid of trying anything and everything in developing new flavors. You might not know it, but without Dogfish, craft beer might not be what we know it today.

Dogfish Head
60 Minute IPA
India Pale Ale
6.0% abv
"Off-centered stuff, for off-centered people"