Dogfish Head Pearl Jam Twenty Faithful Ale:
Greetings to all and a special greeting to all you grunge fans out there (you unwashed masses).  Today, lets celebrate something special to anyone who was a music fan in the early 1990s: Eddie Vedder singing clearly.  Well, that is maybe too much, maybe being able to understand the majority of the lyrics is more apt.  Anyway, last year, Cameron Crowe released a documentary on Pearl Jam called “Twenty” to celebrate the 20 years of PJ and the album “Ten”.  Not to be out done, Dogfish Head released Pearl Jam Twenty Faithful Ale, their own tribute to the aforementioned parties and made sure their marketing for this release was limited to the good people of Rehoboth and that was about it.  Now, limited marketing can mean good or bad things; the product can be stellar and word of mouth alone will do the advertising for you or the product is a let down and you were afraid of it hitting the market.  Now knowing that the good people of Dogfish Head have purposely dumped thousands of gallons of bad 120 minute down the drain on national TV; product quality shouldn’t be in question and thankfully it isn’t;  so here you go guys, free word of mouth. The beer pours well, pouring a dark golden color with a good head that doesn’t overpower the nose of grapes, currants (which it is brewed with) and a bit of grain.  The taste is very Belgium with a hop heavy front end that moves to a balance of hops and mellow fruit that hangs on just a bit on the back-end before giving up the leader position to the hops again.  Not a strong ale at 7% ABV, it is definitely one of the more drinkable Belgiums I’ve run across this year.  I enjoyed it but not really high on my list of something to come back to right now.  Maybe with time I’ll be interested in revisiting it but I’m starting to think the novelty of the beer was greater than the beer itself.