WildaYeast
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Hi folks,
Not quite a beer review, per se, but wasn't sure where else to slot this. Enjoyable read in today's Courier Mail about US brewer Dogfish taking on some ancient recipes.
Cheers, Brian
++++++++++++++++
Ancient brews return
By Rory Gibson
June 23, 2009 12:00am
THOSE who like their beer aged would be thrilled with what's going on at Dogfish Head.
The US company has a brewery in Delaware that is making a drink from what may be the world's oldest recipe for beer.
They are calling it Chateau Jiahu, and it is a concoction featuring rice, honey and fruit.
It was the party drink of Chinese peasants 9000 years ago, which puts it way out in front of other alcoholic beverages, in terms of longevity, by almost 1000 years if you can believe Wikipedia's version of the history of beer, which puts the ealiest references to beer at the 6th millenium BC.
University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in northern China.
McGovern asked the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware, to knock up a batch of the ancient drink, which they duly did in 2006.
Now they've had another crack at it, and the result is Chateau Jiahu.
In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used pre-gelatinised rice flakes, wildflower honey, muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and chrysanthemum flowers.
Sake yeast was used and it was fermented for a month, and the result is a strong beer (8%) which by all accounts is quite smooth and not overly sweet.
It's fascinating how these connections with the past and with places can be made through beer.
Dogfish Head has always had a reputation for producing adventurous beers, and Chateau Jiahu isn't the only unusual effort.
They have also just bottled a brew called Sah'tea, a makeover of a ninth-century Finnish drink.
Brewed with rye, the wort was caramelised with white-hot river rocks, then fermented with a German weizen yeast. Juniper berries foraged from the Finnish countryside, and a tea made with black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper were tossed in.
And then there's a brew called Theobroma, which translated means "food of the gods". It's a cocoa-based beer born out of chemical analysis of 3200-year-old pottery fragments from the Ulua Valley in Honduras.
Archaeologist John Henderson at Cornell University first described the beverage in 2007, pushing the first use of the chocolate plant back by 600 years.
Dogfish's latest batch of Theobroma was made from a blend of cocoa, honey, and chillies.
There's even an Australian connection with one of their eccentric brews, called Pangaea.
Named after the supercontinent that gave birth to the Americas, Australia, Antarctica and Asia about 250 million years ago, it has been brewed with ingredients from every continet, including crystallised ginger from Australia and water from Antarctica.
It's when you see what a brewery like Dogfish Head is doing that you realise that Australia has a long way to go in terms of exploring the boundaries of what is possible with the ancient art of brewing.
Link to source
Not quite a beer review, per se, but wasn't sure where else to slot this. Enjoyable read in today's Courier Mail about US brewer Dogfish taking on some ancient recipes.
Cheers, Brian
++++++++++++++++
Ancient brews return
By Rory Gibson
June 23, 2009 12:00am
THOSE who like their beer aged would be thrilled with what's going on at Dogfish Head.
The US company has a brewery in Delaware that is making a drink from what may be the world's oldest recipe for beer.
They are calling it Chateau Jiahu, and it is a concoction featuring rice, honey and fruit.
It was the party drink of Chinese peasants 9000 years ago, which puts it way out in front of other alcoholic beverages, in terms of longevity, by almost 1000 years if you can believe Wikipedia's version of the history of beer, which puts the ealiest references to beer at the 6th millenium BC.
University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in northern China.
McGovern asked the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware, to knock up a batch of the ancient drink, which they duly did in 2006.
Now they've had another crack at it, and the result is Chateau Jiahu.
In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used pre-gelatinised rice flakes, wildflower honey, muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and chrysanthemum flowers.
Sake yeast was used and it was fermented for a month, and the result is a strong beer (8%) which by all accounts is quite smooth and not overly sweet.
It's fascinating how these connections with the past and with places can be made through beer.
Dogfish Head has always had a reputation for producing adventurous beers, and Chateau Jiahu isn't the only unusual effort.
They have also just bottled a brew called Sah'tea, a makeover of a ninth-century Finnish drink.
Brewed with rye, the wort was caramelised with white-hot river rocks, then fermented with a German weizen yeast. Juniper berries foraged from the Finnish countryside, and a tea made with black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper were tossed in.
And then there's a brew called Theobroma, which translated means "food of the gods". It's a cocoa-based beer born out of chemical analysis of 3200-year-old pottery fragments from the Ulua Valley in Honduras.
Archaeologist John Henderson at Cornell University first described the beverage in 2007, pushing the first use of the chocolate plant back by 600 years.
Dogfish's latest batch of Theobroma was made from a blend of cocoa, honey, and chillies.
There's even an Australian connection with one of their eccentric brews, called Pangaea.
Named after the supercontinent that gave birth to the Americas, Australia, Antarctica and Asia about 250 million years ago, it has been brewed with ingredients from every continet, including crystallised ginger from Australia and water from Antarctica.
It's when you see what a brewery like Dogfish Head is doing that you realise that Australia has a long way to go in terms of exploring the boundaries of what is possible with the ancient art of brewing.
Link to source
