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traveling through this world of woe

  • Nov. 8th, 2009 at 4:50 PM
spies mfu get plastered
So, after years of looking, I finally scored a bottle of Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu, yet another Dogfish Head triumph of experimental, molecular, and forensic archaeology and spectrographic analysis. 

If you don't know, Dogfish Head makes several beverages that are attempts to reconstruct the alcoholic drinks of ages past--Midas Touch, a 2700-year-old Egyptian barleywine recipe which is one of my favorite beers; Theobroma, an attempt to reconstruct a 3200-year-old Aztec chocolate brew; and of course Chateau Jiahu.

Midas Touch is available constantly, but the other two are something the guys at the brewery make and release when they feel like it, and I haven't been able to find any previously. But last week I was wandering through a Whole Paycheck, and what did I find?

...I bought a bottle of each (they are wine-bottle sized). And since I am having dinner company tonight, I decided to open the Chateau Jiahu to share.

TBRE and I split a little out into cordial glasses in advance of company. It's interesting. Sweet, as you would expect, malty, not as floral as I would have thought but the note is there. Also, traces of bitterness--I know not whence they come.

It's maybe not quite as well-balanced as it could be, but that's kind of balanced out by the coolness of drinking, dude, Neolithic ale.
  • Mood: drunk... okay, not really
  • Music:TBRE's boy playing guitar in the living room

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( 18 comments — Leave a comment )
[info]hownottowrite wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 09:59 pm (UTC)
Jealous!
I do so love the Theobroma! Hmmm... Perhaps I shall hoof it up to the Dogfish Head Ale House tonight and see what they've got!
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[info]goingferal wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 10:19 pm (UTC)
Re: Jealous!
I had dinner at the DHAH in Maryland last week and almost ordered the Theobroma (I really wanted the Punkin, but they were out), but I was dissuaded by the expense and the size relative to my desire to drink that evening.
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[info]hownottowrite wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 11:06 pm (UTC)
Re: Jealous!
Indeed. It's a sharing kind of thing. A whole one would knock anyone out.
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[info]peacockharpy wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 10:20 pm (UTC)
Mmmmmmmmmmm, ancient beer.

We love Midas Touch, so I'm going to be on the lookout for the other two. (Theobroma in particular would be a nice Christmas gift for my husband...)
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[info]martianmooncrab wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 10:21 pm (UTC)
there is the Ninkasi Brewery too..
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[info]akiko wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 10:26 pm (UTC)
Have you tried the Sah'Tea? It's really sweet, and it kind of tastes like honey no-milk-chai beer. The Theobroma was too bitter(?) for my tastes, sadly, though my friends loved it. (It had the same characteristic of brown ales that I don't like.)

On the old-recipe beer front, New Holland Brewery out of Colorado makes a delightful black ale from a 1554 Belgian recipe. It's like a stout, except without the heaviness. Yum!
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[info]serizawa3000 wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 10:35 pm (UTC)
Mesopotamian beer gods and other such oddities
I see the Dogfish label when I go to Wegmans, but I didn't know about their recreations of ancient recipes. I've maybe had one sip of some sort of mead at a RenFest some years ago but that's about it (I'm kind of a teetotaler, to be honest... only ever got drunk once so far, and not even very drunk. Just that "Oh, I'm drunk, I don't want to slur my speech, so I'll make sure People. Understand. Every. Word. I'm. Saying." sort of drunk.). I remember reading ages ago about some scientists trying to recreate some beer from fragments of a recipe found in Mesopotamia... Beer gods.

That said, I've been trying to find Blenheim wine, which is from the winery of Dave Matthews and his brother. Have not been able to find it anywhere. Of course, the winery in question is in Charlottesville, which is maybe a couple few hours' drive from where I live...
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[info]starlady38 wrote:
Nov. 8th, 2009 11:56 pm (UTC)
I ♥ Midas Touch. I'll have to head down to the liquor store and see if they have either of the other two in stock.
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[info]aliseadae wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 01:45 am (UTC)
My Ancient Egyptian Civ professor occasionally talks about Ancient Egyptian Beer. From what he said, there wasn't much of it made and it was very strong.
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[info]liddle_oldman wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 03:26 am (UTC)
Ooooo!

I'd heard that someone was recreating early beer, but I had no idea it was commercially available!
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[info]summers_place wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 05:35 am (UTC)
I'm in the Brewers' Guild of my local SCA chapter, and we have a few folks who have tried approximating things like that, now that Dogfish Head has released theirs and we've tasted it.
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[info]swan_tower wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 04:01 am (UTC)
Dogfish makes me wish I actually liked booze.
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[info]summers_place wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 05:33 am (UTC)
Midas Touch is freakin' AWESOME!!! I homebrew, and I plan to try to make something along similar lines next year, though I will have to use a lot of pure guesswork. But hey, that's half the fun.

I totally need to find the Chateau Jiahu and Theobroma and give them a try. Dogfish Head is one of my favorite microbreweries.
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[info]apis_mellifera wrote:
Nov. 9th, 2009 12:07 pm (UTC)
I love Midas Touch and I have a bottle of Theobroma in my kitchen for drinking sometime soon. I'm lucky in that Dogfish Head is local to me, so there's generally a pretty good selection at our local liquor store. I'm also very fond of their rum and vodka.
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[info]cissa wrote:
Nov. 10th, 2009 12:33 am (UTC)
Ooo. I LOVE Dogfish Head brews, but alas! can't get the Theobroma or the Chateau Jiahu around here, and I've looked hard.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Nov. 10th, 2009 01:34 am (UTC)
Whole Paycheck. I shit you not.
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[info]cissa wrote:
Nov. 10th, 2009 01:49 am (UTC)
Alas! MA has very convoluted laws that mean that our local Whole Paycheck cannot carry the booze. *weeps* And the specialty liquor stores have not given us any joy, even when they have a Beer Dude who is really keen on acquiring such. *weeps more*
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[info]batwrangler wrote:
Nov. 10th, 2009 01:15 pm (UTC)
The Meat House locations in NH carry Dogfish Head brews. Maybe their MA stores do too?
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( 18 comments — Leave a comment )

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