Review: Dogfish head 90 minute imperial IPA

According to the label it is :

an imperial India Pale Ale featuring a single, constant 90 minute hop addition. It's balanced by a ridiculous amount of English Two-row Barley. Then we dry-hop it in every tank.

The result is a beer that is bitter right from the start, with a very bitter after taste that lingers for a good 20 seconds. This beer is perhaps the worst beer I have tasted. It takes alot to rank below the bland cheap american beers you drink in college (natty bo, milwalkie's best), and maybe it is better than a warm one of those (but not a cold one). I like a lot of Dogfish Head's beer, but this one is downright awful, I won't be getting it again.

To be fair, I don't care for IPA's in the first place, so me not liking this one is hardly surprising. If you like IPA's and and so drunk that anything tastes good, and have destroyed your taste buds through years of eating all-to-spicy foods, then you may be able to tolorate one of these.

[update 3/23/2009]
Want a totally different second opinion? The folks at RateBeer rank it in the 99 percentile! I think I just failed as a beer connoisseur .

Diet Pepsi Jazz: Caramel Cream

I don't really care for diet sodas, however, I don't care for the the empty calories of regular soda, so I am willing to try diets in hope that I find ones that taste good and don't have an aftertaste. My first drink of Diet Pepsi Caramel Cream left me with two impressions 1: its pepsi; 2: with a different aftertaste. The caramel flavor doesn't really come through as you are drinking it, but afterwards, you can taste it. It is very light and not unplesant. The good part is that it covers up the usual diet drink taste. I can't say that I am a huge fan of it, but given the choice between regular diet pepsi and this flavor, I would choose this one every time. (0 calories; 0g fat; 0g carbs; 0g protein; 2% sodium)

Mountain Dew: Game Fuel

Currently in a dark, Halo3 inspired can. Mountain dew with with an invigorating blast of citrus cherry flavor. This tastes alot like Mountain Dew: Code Red, with citrus that gives it a slightly sharper flavor. If you liked Code Red, you will probably like this too. I liked this flavor, it is distinctive, it doesn't taste like other sodas (or regular mountain dew). It is of course, sweet and carbonated and has Brominated Vegetable Oil (is that a good thing?) (170 calories; 46g carbs; 9g protein; 3% sodium; per 12oz can)

Caribou Coffee: Northern Lite Chocolate Cooler

This is like a coffee/chocolate slurpee. The main flavor of this is sweet. very sweet. Next, you taste the milk, followed by coffee, then a little bit of chocolate flavor. To me, this was too sweet, the syrupy milk taste was decent, but not quite what I was looking for. On a hot day, I would take this over a hot coffee, and I will probably try some of the other flavors on different days just to be sure that it wasn't just that the person making it today added too much sugar. It is a sugary, slushy, icey coffee drink. (210 calories; 5g fat 45g carbs; 5g protein; 125mg sodium; per 16 oz serving)

Godiva Chocolate: Dark Chocolate Raspberry Chocolixir

Fancy name, but a chocolixir is just a frozen slush that is chocolate flavor, kind of like a slurpee, or an Chocolate Frappuccino. What do you get when you mix Chocolate sirup, chocolate chunks, raspberry sauce, and whipped cream into a frozen drink? Possibly the best tooth-rotting, chocolate flavored drinking experience ever. This stuff is super-good, rich chocolate flavor with just enough raspberry. It is very sweet and by the time I was halfway through it I think my taste buds overloaded and shut down. Not every Godiva botique offers it, but if you like chocolate (and I mean good chocolate) and like sweet frozen drinks, this one is worth going out of your way for.

Samuel Adams: Honey Porter

Sam Adams Honey Porter is aonther one of their Brewmaster's Collection beers. This is a proter, so it is a dark beer, but the honey should offset some of the bitterness, which to a certain extent I am sure it does. I poured it in a glass and the beer looked black, it is that dark. It is a good beer, but in the end, it is a little too dark and bitter for me. If you like dark beers, try it though.

Wild Cherry Pepsi

As a kid I really liked Cherry Coke, then as I got older, it started being too sweet for me. Since Pepsi is a bit sweeter than Coke, you won't be suprised that it is sweeter than I like. Other than that, it has that wholesome caffeine goodness. It has a mild cherry flavor, just enough so that you know it is there, but not enough to overpower the cola. (160 calories; 0g fat; 42g carb; 0g protein; 1% sodium; per 12oz can)

Diet Rite Pure Zero Tangerine

The pure zero refers to 0 calories, 0 carbs, 0 caffeine, 0 sodium. It is made with Splenda. It is pretty good, sweet, but not too sweet, no aftertaste. It has an orangey-tangerine flavor. I generally stay a way from soda's without caffeine (what's the point? It is like cigarettes without nicotine.) But I wanted something sweet so I decided to try it. I was plesantly suprised and have had a couple of more. The only negative is that if I didn't know it was tangerine, I probably would have guessed it was orange flavored, when you get into the artificial flavors orange and tangerine taste very close.

Samuel Adams: Black Lager

Sam Adams makes good beer. Sure, a beer snob might look down on it, but I like it. It has a much fuller flavor than most beers, and I tend to like mine a bit dark, not the watery Bud or Rolling Rock. Given this, Black Lager seems custom made for me. It is much like regular Sam, but is darker, with a rich flavor and a bit more bite, but not harsh. I wouldn't say I like it better than regular Sam, but it is a nice change sometimes. (144 calories; 0g fat; 13g carbs; 1.2g protein; per 12 oz bottle)

Nestle flavored water

I have tried the "Nestle Pure Life Raspberry Splash water Natural Fruit Flavored water beverage with other natural flavors" (note much too much to type). I didn't like it very much. the flavor seemed a bit 'fake' and although it smelled vaguely of raspberry, it didn't taste much like it.

They Claim "Nestle PureLife Natural Fruit Flavored Water Beverage" combines the goodness of pure refreshing water with the delicious taste of natural fruit. (I repeat, that is way too long a product name). First off, if your adding stuff to the water it isn't pure refreshing water anymore is it, second, although natural fruit may be delicious, the flavors they add weren't.

Dunkin' Donuts Iced Coffee

What makes Dunkin' Donuts coffee good is the cream and sugar. It makes the iced coffee good too. I tried the iced coffee for the first time and it was good. Usually iced coffee seems a little more bitter and more watery than regular cofee. This iced coffee didn't have either problem. The lack of bitterness probably had do to with the cream and sugar I got it with and the not watery part is probably because they use twice as much ground coffee as you would for hot coffee. Take all this together and you get a very refreshing and satisfying drink. (16 oz: 6g fat, 2g protein, 16g carbs, 120 calories)

Bigelow Lemon Lift tea

This is a surprisingly good tea. A hint of lemon really adds flavor to it. It is regular, caffeinated black tea, not some weak herbal tea. It was much better than I expected and I will have it again.

V8 Vegetable Juice

There are good things and bad things about V8 juice. You get lots of vegetable goodness from a can of it, and you can drink it on the go. I don't know if you have ever tried eating a tomato while driving your car, but drinking this sure sounds easier. It also has a variety of vegetable juices in it, so you get lots of stuff. I am sure there is some good stuff in vegetables that doesn't come out in the juice so it isn't perfect. Some people don't like the flavor of it, and it does have a thicker texture to it. If you've never had it before, I'd recommend buying a single can or two and seeing how much you like it before committing to larger quantities. I find the taste interesting and different, which combined with the vegetable goodness is enough to get me to drink it.

Lipton Hot Spiced Cider

This is a small packet of stuff that dissolves in hot water. It has a sweet, appley taste, as you would expect. They actually do a pretty decent job on making this taste like hot cider. Keep in mind, this is really just flavored sugar water. It isn't like this counts as one of your servings of fruits and vegetables or anything. Nutritionally, you are probably better drinking a cup of water, or even tea. That said, it makes a nice change of pace and is a reasonable treat every now and then.

Bigelow Earl Grey

A rich tea with lots of varied flavors. This has much more body and is darker than Lipton tea. It smells and tastes good. Just because it has lots of different flavors doesn't mean that it is some 'peppermint camamile lemon fizz tea", this is traditional tea flavor. If you like a flavorful tea, and like the convenience of tea-bags, you will like this tea.

MetroMint orangemint water

Water, but flavored with orange and mint. MetroMint managed to avoid the biggest problem with flavored waters, their's isn't too sweet. In fact, it isn't sweet at all. This is a good thing. It has a little mint flavor and just the slightest hint of Orange. It is pretty good, but, aybe I am old fashioned, but I really like water. Plain water. Given the choice I would probably take a nice glass of regular water over this. Not a stunning endorsement I know, but if you don't like sweet waters, and also don't care for plain water, you should try this.

Pepsi One

The soft drink companies are getting better at hiding the aftertaste from artificial sweetners (this one uses Splenda). Better, but not perfect. It still tastes a little bit odd. I would say it is on par with Coke Zero and which you like better depends on if you like regular coke or pepsi better. I wouldn't go out of my way to get this again.

Espresso Macchiato

Macchiato is Italian for "marked" This drink is an espresso that is marked with milk froth. There are a lot of coffee drinks you can make with espresso in it and you may find you like some but not others. Roughly speaking, going from most espresso like to least, you find: Espresso, Macchiato, Cappuccino, and Latte. I like latte's but don't care for the rest of them. A Macchiato is really just an espresso with just a little bit of foamed milk on it. If you like espresso you will probably like a macchiato, but if you don't like expresso, you won't like a macchiato either.

Bigelow English Teatime

A dark, full-bodied tea. This is much richer than Lipton tea, it also has a hint of bitterness. But if you like tea with lots of flavor, and the convenience of tea-bags, this is worth trying.

Diet Dr Pepper

Yes, Diet Dr Pepper is more like Regular Dr. Pepper. I've always wondered who came up with that, 'is more like' implies there is something that is 'less like' it somewhere, so are they implying that Diet Dr. Pepper is more like Regular Dr. Pepper than Diet Coke is? or do they mean that Diet Dr. Pepper is more like Regular Dr. Pepper than Diet Coke is like Regular Coke?

Those musings aside, it is reasonably close in taste. It is one of the few diet sodas I will choose to drink.