Dogfish Head Immort Ale

Classified into that very large catch-all group of "American Strong Ale", the Dogfish Immort Ale is a brew I haven't seen in Connecticut since I moved here.  Spending about a quarter of my life living on Maryland's eastern shore, this is something I had seen from time to time.  But at the time I was an entirely different type of beer drinker, and I'm looking forward to visiting this one again.

The Immort Ale poured into my Dogfish glass a very dark rusty color, definitely not black, but on the severe dark side of brown.  Foam is present, but relatively thin.  I'm not all that surprised, as the bottle says this bad-boy is 11% abv.  The little foam that does develop is lasting pretty long, with a decent amount of lacing as it retreats.

The first thing that my nose detects is the alcohol, and plenty of it. Hiding behind the booze are the layers of dark roasty malts that remind me of a campfire, something like hickory and maple and such.  There's also a fair amount of hops in the nose, but they're pushed to the background by the malts and the alcohol.

On the palate, this is going to be an interesting one to try to describe.  I feel like it starts out fairly rough and unbalanced, but then the flavors seem to come in waves.  One sip will show nothing but sweet, roasted, dark malts.  The next sip is coasting my tongue with bitter & citrusy hops.  And the third sip is purely dominated by the booziness of the whole thing.  I'm sticking with my original adjective of "unbalanced", but not necessarily in a bad way.

After a few sips (okay, maybe more than a few), this is kind-of reminding me of the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot.  It sorta reminds me of a really hopped up version of a barley-wine, which is the side of barley wine that's not really my favorite.  If this were more bitter and hoppy, I'd recommend it to the hop-heads.  If it were sweeter and more malty, I could recommend it to the guys that drink the beers I normally prefer.  The Immort seems to reside somewhere in the middle, and I'm not sure where to go with it.  I'd really like to see how this tastes in a year or two, maybe right up my alley?!

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Immort Ale
TCHS Rating - 7.5/10
Aka - Interesting, but I'm not in love

Eli
Bibo Ergo Sum