When walking down the beer aisle, the Flying Dog Pale Ale is certainly something that might catch your attention, with its intricate and complex illustration of a dog using a wing mechanism on the label.

Someone clearly put a lot of effort into this design. But I hoped someone put a lot of work into the complexity of the beer, too.

The first thing I noticed when I poured the beer into a glass was the interesting smell. It wasn’t strong, but this beer has an earthy scent that isn’t very typical of a lot of the beers I’ve tried. I was excited to take a sip, but was immediately disappointed as soon as it hit my tongue.

These small breweries tend to get creative with beers. The Flying Dog Brewery got creative with its name, design and even with the smell of the beer, but the taste was far from it. It was exactly what I expected it to be, a typical pale ale without much complexity. It had the usual, hoppy flavor with a slightly burnt and mediocre aftertaste.

As someone who doesn’t like a strong hoppy flavor, this isn’t the beer I’d order at a bar. And it’s really not something I’d even recommend to people who like hoppy beers because I think there are plenty of better options. But if you find yourself with a Flying Dog, order something fried and salty to go with it. A nice, fried food will help tone down the bitterness and maybe make this beer a bit more enjoyable.

The side of the bottle quotes Hunter S. Thompson, an American author and journalist, “Good people drink good beer.” I completely agree with this quote and I even support the fact that it appears on this bottle because this is definitely a good beer, but that’s all it is. It’s not great, it’s not superior and it’s certainly not unique.

Don’t buy a beer because it has a pretty label or a fancy name, because this is proof that extraordinary branding doesn’t always equal extraordinary taste.