I decided to splurge. I was at my local Taco Mac, you see, and since I wasn’t driving, I decided to splurge. The splurge of course was a beer, one Dogfish Head Immort Ale if you must know. Normally, I wouldn’t order an 11% alcohol by volume beer if I were driving, but as I said I wasn’t driving so…one obstacle down. The price was the other concern. At $9.25 for said 11 ounces of beer, this wasn’t cheap. But like I said. It’s a splurge.
Of course, when I splurged I thought I hadn’t had the beer before. When I got home, I checked my trusty excel spreadsheet, and sure enough, there it was. I had had it. A little googling of usenet also found I had even taken tasting notes on September 10th, 1998. This was from the very first bottling of Immort Ale in 1997:
Murky orange color. Generous foamy head. Slightly sour nose. Big, big beer! As the label indicates, this 11% ABV behemoth is rich and incredibly complex, "vast in character", a tinge of sourness blends with maple, vanilla, and oak (all mentioned on the label), and yes, they're there in abundance with hints of raisin, smoke, and a potent dose of alcoholic warmth. There are so many things going on in this beer simultaneously it's hard to keep track. This is the big one, Elizabeth!
Dogfish says of the beer:
Pour this over pancakes. Vast in character, luscious and complex, Immort Ale was born at our brewpub in 1995 and made its way into bottles in 1997.
For this beer, we use maple syrup from Red Brook Farm (Sam's family farm in Western Massachusetts), peat-smoked barley and vanilla.
Immort is fermented with a blend of English and Belgian yeasts, then aged in the big oak tanks at the brewery.
Dogfish Immort Ale has 50 IBUs, too in case you were wondering.
Dogfish Head Immort Ale, a barleywine, pours to a dark brownish orange color with minimal head formation and a parade of figs, smoke and toasted oak in the nose. Taking a sip, I get rich caramel malt up front, strong notes of vanilla, sweet maple, subtle smoke, toasty woody oak, raisins and figs, black cherries, finishes on the sweet side balanced by alcohol warmth, but still finishes sweet.
As much as I hate $9 short pours, in the end, this one was worth the splurge. It was amazingly complex. It was delicious. It was as good as I hadn’t remembered. I have yet to see this in the bottle here in Georgia, but if I do I’ll be sure to grab some.
And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box.
*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.
(B)=Bottled
(D)=Draft