120 Minutes To Freedom

120 Minutes To Freedom

Forget 40oz, when you're searching for that perfect escape to freedom you probably should look to something that comes in at 18% alcohol by volume. I don't mean the hard liquor either. What I'm looking to is Dogfish Head's thrice annual release of 120 Minute IPA.

When it comes to Dogfish Head, you have many options in the number of minutes of your IPA. Both 60 and 90 is out there, but it's the 120 Minute IPA that will get you where you need to go.

If you're familiar with the now canceled Discovery Channel show Brew Masters, you will know that Dogfish Head's founder Sam Calagione will tell you that beer is simple stuff. Just mix in water, hops, malt and yeast... In the case of 120 minute IPA, you gotta add a lot of those things to make it a big and bold high gravity beer.



The 120 also represents the IBU's that you'll get out of this beer. For those of you who aren't beer snobs, IBU means international bitterness units. So it's the measurement of how bitter something is. The higher the IBU, generally the higher the bitterness is. So if you're after that hoppy taste in beer, you generally want to see that number up there.

Though I say generally a higher IBU means a higher bitterness to the beer, but in the case of this beer you'll be surprised to know that it's really not that bitter. In fact, it's actually really sweet. If you've ever had Russian River's Pliny the Younger or Brewdog Tokyo you'll see that the higher the alcohol by volume, you'll most likely have a sweeter tasting beer.

The reason for this sweeter taste even though you have a massive amount of IBU's is because when your goal is to reach a high alcohol content like this you will end up with a lot more unfermentable sugars that will go on to create a sweeter beer. In the case of 120 Minute IPA, you're looking at around an 18% ABV. This has pushed Dogfish Head to advise folks NOT to finish a whole bottle by themselves.

For one thing, with how sweet it is you wont even realize how much alcohol you have consumed. And for another thing, that's

So the question now remains on how does this beer taste? Well, sweet for one thing. Which is really odd when you're drinking an Imperial IPA. When you're taking a swig of it, you're sort of expecting those hoppy characteristics. You want to get that bitterness that the 120 IBU advertises but you really don't. That's not to say it's a bad thing. You should just realize that this isn't going to be a hopheads hop bomb.

You'll definitely get a flavor full of the citrus that you come to expect when drinking an IPA. In fact, you'll probably taste all those flavors that you would get in an IPA, but it's just masked by a large punch of sweetness in your face.

The nice thing about this beer is that you can lay it down and cellar it. Yeah, that may sound a bit odd to treat beer like wine and cellar it, especially when you have adverts from Coors and Bud telling you the born on date and how fresh and cold to drink it. But when it comes to higher abv beers, you can lay them down and over time they'll develop a lot of different characteristics.

In the situation with IPA's, you're automatically going to see the hop notes take a backseat and mellow out. That's normal.



While you'll have your chance to get some 120 minute IPA today from 38 Degrees in Alhambra, Ca, Yesterday The Far Bar in Little Tokyo just tapped their keg with very little hype behind it during their IPA weekend.

It really reminded me of the Pliny the Younger situation. All over town places like Verdugo Bar and Surly Goat were making big events out of the tapping of that monster IPA and creating lines for it that were a good hour or more long. All the while places like Father's Office didn't mention anything about it and just tapped it.

Even better, they gave out a bigger pour. A full 8oz per pour where the 38 Degree release will be 5oz pours. Apparently this wasn't well known as they are reporting that they had some left for Day 2 of the IPA festival.

For my money, if you're a hophead looking for that dare of bitterness to your mouth, I would go with Stone's Ruination IPA. It clocks in at around 100 IBU's and you are going to know it's 100 IBU's when you drink it. Other viable options would be Ballast Point's Sculpin or Bootleggers Brewery Knuckle Sandwich

That's not to say 120 Minute IPA is bad at all, It really isn't. It's just a different beast altogether which you should still check off your bucket list of beers to try. You'll get a slap across your face of sweetness and not hoppiness.

Over all, it's well worth trying just to say you tried it. Also to realize how sweet it really is even though it has those high IBU levels. That in itself will surprise you. To be perfectly honest, I would buy a couple of these bottles if I saw them on the shelf. It may not be an everyday drink, but it cellars well and is great to show off a vastly different

The Economy Superbowl

The Economy Superbowl

So it's time for the superbowl again. As a fan of television and not so much the game, I look forward to watching the ads that they come up with.. Only there's a small hitch.. it seems like there doesn't seem like a lot of companies want to advertise this year.

A week before Super Bowl XLIII, NBC is still in “active negotiations” to sell its last few commercial spots.

That’s why some advertising wags are calling Super Bowl 2009 the Economy Bowl.

This close to game time, it’s unusual to have any of the 67 time slots unsold.

The network, which will show next Sunday’s game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, had no trouble getting takers for its record-high $3 million-per-half-minute spots — before Labor Day.

After that, sales fizzled along with the economy.

This year, notable previous advertisers, including General Motors and FedEx, have said they’re taking a break from the chance to reach 90 million to 148 million viewers, depending on who’s doing the estimating.

“A lot of advertisers are a little gun-shy,” said David Shoffner, spokesman for SpotBowl.com, which monitors Super Bowl commercials and viewer reaction.

“They’re thinking of the message it sends to their employees and stockholders who might view it as extravagant to spend a record amount when they’re laying off employees or cutting dividends.”

So this is the Economy Bowl when it comes to the ad dollars being spent. Which is a bit of a tragedy. I couldn't give a rats ass about the Arizona Cardinals and the Steelers are clearly going to win this game. So the only thing of any interest would be the commercials during the actual event. Otherwise it's better to just go out and do some shopping during the game. You'll be surprised how empty stores are.



But no, I'll tough it out. In this hard economy you have to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and watch whatever they're able to give to you. There will be those who embrace being cheap. One company doing this is Miller. A company who realizes that spending 3 million for 30 seconds is rather silly and decided to only put out for a one second spot

MillerCoors said Tuesday that it will premier a one-second ad for its Miller High Life brand during the Super Bowl broadcast Feb. 1.

The spot will focus on the brand’s current campaign that features the burly High Life delivery man who aims to reinforce the brand as a “good, honest beer at a tasty price.” MillerCoors notes that air time for a 30-second commercial during the game is selling for as high as $3 million.

“Miller High Life is all about high quality and great value, so it wouldn’t make sense for this brand to pay $3 million for a 30-second ad,” said High Life senior brand manager Kevin Oglesby, in a press release. “Just like our consumers, High Life strives to make smart choices. One second should be plenty of time to remind viewers that Miller High Life is common sense in a bottle.

And if one second of your life is wasted on anything better than this, I'd like to know about it! Then again, that's for their low brow label. I'm sure they're tossing money left and right for the ads for Miller Lite. So as ghetto as Miller Highlife is, I think I'll buy one from my local liquor market tonight to honor their one second dedication.

After drinking all that cheap booze, I bet you'd be more open to some wild experimentation. Perhaps you'll even dabble in.... dare I say it... Vegetarianism. Peta sure hopes so as is seen with all the controversy with their offering to the Superbowl ad pool.



But you wont see it because NBC thought it was too provocative. Either that or they're with everyone else in thinking that Peta is out of their god damn minds. I fail to see how this is worse than some of the GoDaddy.com ads. But its PETA so I could really care less about their complaining.

I have to admit that my boner dropped when I saw the PETA logo. How exactly does being a vegetarian make you better at sex? these people want to rename fish to sea kittens. They are fucking insane. They make any claims they can to get what they want. I'm starting to think joining PETA is just an excuse to constantly take your clothes off. I guess what Peta is really saying with these ads is exploiting animals - bad, exploiting women - good.

On the subject of sex selling. Hollywood loves to advertise during the big game. It's the best place to plant all your summer blockbusters in the middle of the media attention without looking like a huge attention whore.

One of them is my childhood government propaganda/toy commercial show that is being turned into a summer film. G.I.Joe. is getting the teaser released during Sundays big game and I'm sure you all can't wait. Here's a taste of the posters.



But I have to question the timing of when this G.I.Joe film is being released. After all, the Army suicide rate just hit a 30 year high. Clearly knowing isn't half the battle. Or at least not the half of the battle that keeps you alive. I'm sure watching a two hour circle jerk to our childhood will bring up soldier morale. Perhaps the real way to support our troops is to not send them to war in the first place... Maybe This is because Obama will repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

When they say "support the troops" that doesn't mean people are going to like you when you get back. You won't come back and magically those millionaires that called you trash and never hired you to work for them, will all of a sudden throw bags of money at you and pat you on the back. In fact they probably won't even tip you at the TGIFridays you end up working at because no one else will hire you.

I'm not a military type of person. I don't like being told when to take a dump or when I'm allowed to eat. That's my choice! Not to mention who to kill. But this isn't G.I.Joe's fault. They only provided me toys like Captain Gridiron, a guy with footballs for grenades. Speaking of which, you mean to tell me that the movie doesn't even have that character in it? This superbowl teaser would have been awesome if he was in the film.

But I give G.I. Joe credit for one thing for influencing, my taste in babes...


OOOOOooh yeah. These two shaped my childhood in so many ways. Scarlet and Baroness. One for a redhead kick and the other cause, well.. The Baroness is hot. Plain and simple.

So yeah. This blog has really been super in itself. It has went from talking about the down economy and how it is effecting the superbowl, cheap beer, Peta nonsense and then G.I. Suicide rates.. So much like the half time show, this is one big mess!

Happy Superbowl Sunday, folks!