Captain Video's Mountain Retreat

I'm a big fan of the Dogfish 90 min IPA, and the more Dogfish Head beers I try, the more impressed I am with the crazy, and successful directions this brewery goes.

Then I saw this beast at the bottleshop: "...continually hopped over a 120-minute boil and then dry hopped every day for a month." Add in the "20% ALC. BY VOL" warning sticker... and a $10 per 12 oz price-point... well, crap... what could I do?

ABV: 18% (the brewery website says 18% -- the bottle has a sticker on it that says 20%)
IBU: 120
OG: 1.205 (45 degrees plato)
Style: Imperial IPA? (No way. This clearly falls into BJC's "Liquid Insanity" category.)
Website: http://bit.ly/4dBa

Background:
Dogfish Head Brewery (DFH) is one of our quintessential American craft breweries. Based in Delaware, and founded by Sam Calagione, the brewery opened in 1995 and now reportedly produces 75,000 barrels of beer annually. Dogfish Head's tag-line is "Off-centered Ales for off-centered people," and their portfolio of beers backs that statement.

Pre-Tasting Expectations:
The color and IBUs of this beer do fit into what would typically be called an Imperial IPA, but the original gravity and ABV put this beer well outside the lines of typical styles, so I expect this to be much more like a barleywine or some big-ass American strong ale.. I have enough experience with DFH beers that I can assume the beer isn't going to suck, but this is going to be an extreme beer, and it's going to challenge my palette.

Tastage:
The beer is clear, and has a dark golden color -- I'd estimate the color to be about 13 SRM.

The beer foamed up a nice head during the pour, which then dropped down to about a 1/8 inch of nice, fine, smooth foam... solid lacing, continuous nucleation, a very pretty pour.

On the nose, surprisingly for an IPA, I initially got bbq sauce. The hop notes are not as strong as I would expect -- The citrus is there -- but not the nose-full-of-grapefruit that is so common in big American IPAs (so the hopping is probably more bitter based, rather than aromatic, like a cascade or something like that). I also got some mild smoke and single malt scotch odors, which is probably coming from the high level of alcohol.

The taste was a bit of a shock: Candy sweet, with maple sugar and a rich rich barleywine like maltiness -- The beer is so sweet that the 120 IBUs of hops are actually balanced and aren't all in your face. Surprisingly, the beer is so big that the hops are battling to combat the sweetness. There's a mild carbonation on the tongue, but I get a lot of heat. The taste is really much more like a fruity barleywine than an IPA, and the delayed aftertaste is really where the bitterness of the hops make themselves known.

DFH says this should age well, and I'd concur. The flavors in here are a bit contentious, but they should gel over time and I would guess that this will lay down well and should hold up. If it lasts at all, this beer could develop very nicely over years to come.

This stuff is really strong, and really not for the less experimental beer drinkers. 1/2 bottle is almost more than enough of this -- if you try it, plan to split the bottle with someone. Will I shell out $10 for another bottle? Meh. I might, but only to lay it down in hopes of trying it again and maybe doing a vertical tasting of different vintages.

PS. Does beer have a "vintage"?