Dogfish Head Simul-cask @ Memphis Taproom

Last Thurs­day was a ban­ner night for this beer lover. I met my friend Adam and we strolled on over to Mem­phis Tap­room to enjoy a great Dog­fish Head stunt tap­ping for their 75 Minute IPA. We got there a lit­tle ear­ly think­ing we might have to twid­dle our thumbs for a minute before they tapped the cask, but no, we were just in time to knock down a few pints of this great IPA.The 75 Minute IPA blends their trade­mark 60 and 90 Minute IPAs, result­ing in a remark­ably smooth IPA that will still knock you flat if you’re not careful.

Adam and I end­ed up hav­ing a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with my friend Der­rick, anoth­er Mem­phis Tap reg­u­lar and ama­teur beer afi­ciona­do like myself. We dis­cussed the mer­its of Dog­fish Head­’s approach to brew­ing and how great it is to be sand­wiched between so many great brew­eries, all of which are doing dif­fer­ent, dis­tinc­tive things. Dog­fish Head real­ly does a great job of brew­ing sig­na­ture IPAs, com­ple­ment­ed nice­ly by great sea­son­als. I think their spring and sum­mer beers, both of which fea­ture great fruit fla­vors, are among the most refresh­ing I drink, with­out being sick­en­ing­ly sweet.

As an aside, I want­ed to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to men­tion Jay Hin­man’s great beer blog, Hedo­nist Beer Jive. Some of you may rec­og­nize Jay from his leg­endary music blog, Agony Short­hand. Now, instead of debat­ing issues of race with Black to Comm, he’s telling you why he won’t pony up for expen­sive bombers of Russ­ian Riv­er Con­se­cra­tion (and I don’t blame him!) Jay’s always been a great read, and his beer writ­ing is just as fun and engag­ing as his music writ­ing ever was.