Flying Dogs and Dogfish Heads at D'Agostino's Pizza in Glennview

Enter Flying Dog's Doggie Style Pale Ale, a wonderfully aromatic, hoppy creation, 35 IBU, with all the right colors, head and lacing, however watery.  Yes, I said watery because I just finished one of Sam's cheesy hop monsters, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, which you'll see below. 

Let's be real-- Flying Dog's Doggie Style Pale Ale is not a beer I would pour out of bed instead of say, quenching my thirst and cleaning my pallet after some "amazing and delishious", pairing*, however torrid.  No, certainly not.  Moreover, at 5.50% ABV, you may need the hair of this dog that bit you, if your beer goggles were as foggy as they can get sometimes for you young guns.

Make no mistake, Flying Dog makes a yeoman's Pale Ale here (well, in Maryland), a descriptor that maybe has the marketing department there spitting at their screens right now (sorry dudes).  This is a beer company that uses a quote from Hunter S. Thomson to market it's grain juices, so for that alone, there are some who'd overlook any thin, watery aspect that just works like hell to hold up the massive hopped qualities. Northern Brewer, Cascade, Simcoe and Citra certainly carry the day here, however thin the application of 120 Crystal maltz, yo. 

The unwashed hoards at Beer advocate rate this beer an 82, which is perhaps understating the case by several basis points, where as I'd side with the Bros who are closer to the mark at a "Very Good" 85 if not just shy of Outstanding:

 http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/68/1213

You'll find the website here:
http://flyingdogales.com/beers/doggie-style-classic-pale-ale/

These things also depend on viable, easy to access alternatives in the cooler, on the tap or in the bottle fridge at the pub that make one beer easy to replace at the same or lower cost, or what economists call... I forgot.  Well, not the pedantic economists who teach economics, anyway.


Now coming off a Dogfish Head 60 Min !PA, just as the thin crusted pizza arrived at D'Agostino's, well, I felt more like I needed two Doggie Styles to meet the task, where one more 60 Min IPA would have rebooted the entire half pie I scarfed down like a human dumpster, which by the way, is a great product in a town like Chicago, where everyone feels their post WW2, Apple Cobbler style pizza is the only way to make apizza, a notion that goes over about as well as rooting for the Bears when the Pats, Giants or Green Machine are playing in places on the East Coast, like Providence, New Haven, New York or Philly (I'm officially leaving Boston out, because it's typically Greekish pastry crust, which I suffered for near a decade, makes Beantown maybe the biggest pizza letdown city in the nation. However "creative" that pizza just awful... even in the storied, quant North End... most of Florida's pizza is better at this point).

If you really enjoy the mad flavaz of hops, Dogfish 60 Min IPA is creative too, in the Joan Miro or Charles Mingus way, not the refried, double dipped, rancid peanut coated Hostess Brand Twinkie way.  Dogfishhead offers this information-- 60 Northwestern hop additions over 60 minutes, so it's a need to NO! basis there.  And at 6% ABV at par, this beer it's just the hair of the dog they sometimes bites, but a genuine glass of "this way out" if your Bros are all rocking like it's Milla time, circa the "less filling" years (1970 to 1982).

Nevertheless, I'm not spilling secrets here.  If you go to Beeradvocate, where they "respect beer," you'll find Dogfishhead 60 Min rates a 92, which is squarely in the fan boy zone, which is right on the monzey.  I'd give it an Avogadro's Number and leave it there, without trying to split this or that errant hair, while going on and on and on about the relative merits of 60 Min's lacing verses Doggies Style.  Here:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/64/6108

More, less revealing data from Dogfish Head's site for 60 Min:
 http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/year-round-brews/60-minute-ipa.htm

And finally, let's take a minute or less to go on and on and on and talk about the magical and mystical, protein rich maltz in a clean glass trick topic of endless fascination and fabrication, also known as "lacing" among the self styled geeks who feel they need to say something more when they wet their beaks in order to "respect beer".  

But why talk when you can see an empty glass of Dogfish 60 Min on a bar like aunt Becky's Irish linen, right?

No offense to the aunt Becky or the Irish on that last bit, you know it's all fa da lulz.