I’ve mentioned Dogfish Head Brewery a few times in the past, and in one past post I even mentioned that they brew super-IPAs called 60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA and 120 Minute IPA.  The 60 and 90 are both year-round productions, but the 120 only gets attempted a few times a year.  For some time now, several of my friends (who have become strongly enamored of the 90) have been after me to try and find Dogfish Head Brewery’s 120 Minute IPA.  Unfortunately, 120 Minute IPA is  a rare find – the reason why I used the word “attempted” is that for the past couple of years DHF has had trouble getting the batches to come out right.  The last time I was able to find a bottle of 120 was 3 years ago.

So for the past couple of months, I’ve been checking the DFH website to look for updates on possible upcoming releases of 120 Minute IPA.  Unfortunately, we missed one in July, but there was one scheduled for November, so people began to get antsy.

On Tuesday, I had a meeting in Crown Heights followed by a meeting in Manhattan.  Since the temps were in the 60s, I decided to travel by bicycle.  The meeting in Crown Heights was a no-show, and so I was ahead of schedule on my way into Manhattan.  When I reached the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Washington Avenue, I decided on a lark to bike down Washington Avenue to Brooklyn Beer and Soda to see if they had 120 Minute IPA, which they did, with a one per customer limit.  There weren’t that many bottles on the shelf, so I bought what they allowed and continued on my way.  On the way back, I stopped at American Beer on Court Street, where they were allowing 2 bottles per customer.

It was a bit weird that the meeting in CH got blown off.  I can’t tell you what made the idea of turning down Washington occur to me – it was out of my way.  But as of Wednesday afternoon, Brooklyn Beer and Soda was out of 120, and American still had a rapidly dwindling supply.  I will tell you that odd occurences like this one have been of great help in finding special items and in growing my collection.  There was the time I walked into Warehouse looking for Ardbeg Supernova and was told “It came in this morning. How did you know it was here?”

Sometimes, it works well to pay attention to your hunches.

With regard to 120 Minute IPA, this is far from a cheap beer – apart from the inordinate amount of hopping done in the initial stages, they continue hopping this beer for over a month after.  In order to balance the hops, there is a tremendous amount of malt in the beer, and they manage to get the fermentation far enough along that the alcohol level gets into the upper teens.  If you are lucky enough to find one still in the store, you can expect to pay $13 or more per bottle.