Lagunitas - The Waldo's Special Ale

A while back I stopped at my local bottle shop that just happens to be a grocery store.  As I've mentioned in the past Pittsburgh has some funky liquor laws.  Thankfully Giant Eagle (our large local chain of grocery stores) has found a nifty little loophole.  They became bars.  Not entirely, but added a section where you can drink and eat inside the store and this allows them to sell six packs, singles, growlers, and twelve packs.  Thankfully Giant Eagle has a ton of buying power and has allowed lots of stuff to come into the area and has lowered prices city wide.  As you can imagine I'm quite pleased with this scenario.

Like I was saying I went by looking for my dear friend Flying Dog' The Truth.  No surprise they didn't have any.  Sadly a tough find.  The staff at these are pretty good.  they usually know their stuff. So I checked with them just incase they had some in the back of the cooler or something.  The guy suggested this to me instead.  Imperial IPA, high alcohol content, and Lagunitas has a good reputation , so I figured, why not.

I popped it in the freezer, got it nice and cold, and poured it out into a nice tulip glass I had.  Nice deep golden color with a small head on it.  Gave it a sniff, sweet and dark.  The flavor is heavy, and as the label says dank.  It's incredibly resiny, and very sweet.  It's tasty but not what I was looking for, not very well balanced and a bit overpowering, an odd thing for me to say as many of my favorite beers are incredibly overpowering, and unbalanced.  (See my review of Gonzo Imperial Porter)  I got about three quarters of the way through and lost interest.  I had another one a few days later with similar results.  Recently I had another and I was able to get through the full thing without pause.  Maybe I wasn't in the mood for something like this those other times, but this beer sure has it's place.