Friday, July 6, 2012

West Virginia adds Laughing Dog!

The day is finally here! We have another brewery that has a fetish with dogs! Wait a second... Lemme try that again. After months and months of speculation as to when Laughing Dog would make its way here, we finally have something concrete! I strolled into Bottle and Wedge (Huntington, WV) today on a whim and there sat on the shelves three different varieties (Alpha Dog Imperial IPA, Sneaky Pete Imperial IPA, and DogZilla Black IPA). I'll allow for a moment of celebration for IPA fans.

Laughing Dog hails all the way from Ponderay, Idaho. No, Idaho isn't exactly a hotbed for craft beer and Laughing Dog isn't all that well known. However, they do have a reputation for putting out decent imperial style beers. My personal opinion on them is still up in the air though. I haven't tried any of what I picked up today and I'm still holding onto The Dogfather for some unknown reason. I really have to stop buying IPAs so I can catch up on my other brews... Nonetheless, I'll probably dig into a couple of these tonight and throw up a review in the next day or so.






As a side note, I haven't heard any real news on any other breweries making their way here. I recently contacted both Avery and Green Flash. I never heard back from Green Flash, but Avery stated that they are looking to expand, but only after they finish the construction of their new brewery. They said the earliest that WV would have an opportunity to carry their brews would be October of next year. Who the hell knows what is going on with Bell's and Troegs. Ommegang don't know how to pick up a phone or respond to e-mails and I'm convinced that both Capitol Beverage and Shelton Brothers are conspiring to kill the craft beer industry. Neither will answer e-mails and news broke not too long ago that Shelton Brothers is cutting back their Cantillon distribution. Let's make hard to find beer even more scarce! I've been thinking about all of this recently and the more I think about it, the more I believe that WV needs a dedicated craft beer distributor. However, that just makes too much damn sense for that to even work here. Okay, rant over. I'm gonna try and catch up on posting some reviews later today. I have reviews on everything from Three Floyds Dreadnaught IPA to a mini vertical of Goose Island Pere Jacques.

- Jeff

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