This isn't your momma's beer, it's your great great great great great great great.............. grandma's beer.
First if you don't know the story of dogfish head go to their website and read they are the little engine that could. they were brewing like 20 batches a week in kegs on burners in the beginning and that was supporting a brewpub not a small bottle operation. So for dedication to the sport alone I always enjoy their antics. Furthermore, they brew the wackiest stuff available from malt and hops. One of the new ventures is a "sah'tea" beer which borrows from a wild Finnish (that's the country not a typo) beer style with a huge array of grain and juniper berries heavily involved, and they are utilizing a technique the fins share with German rauchbier wherein hot rocks import heat to the wort. These cats are just beer crazy.
Midas touch is no exception, it is apparently the recipe of the oldest known fermented beverage, some 2700 years old; PhD's, carbon dating and spectrum analysis were involved in the production of this recipe. (for serious kids.) As such this beer is about the journey not the bottle. There have been several reviews of this beer that just tear it down. This beer is worth praise for it's ingenuity alone. First It's barely a beer at all really, somewhere between barley wine and mead, made with raisins, honey and saffron it can't be judged by normal beer standards. That said it has unquestionably won awards in beer competitions.
So, how should we rate it. First plan to rate it after you've parked for the evening, it's 9% booze and really i think it hits a little harder than that. I'm aware of the physics that an ounce of ethanol is and ounce of ethanol. But i know gin makes me angry and bourbon makes me wanna hug people. So, Midas touch makes me drunker than 9%. Light in color and just a wee bit cloudy, it serves very well in a goblet or bowl vessel. This is too sweet to delicate for a pint glass or a stein. It's head is very light so pour with vigor and get some aroma going. It is however rather carbonated. Not scary soda (coke for the southerners) carbonated but more so than most craft brews of high caliber. It works out here since it is a fairly sticky and sweet beer. the bubbles keep it clean enough to enjoy. Most beers ought warm up for ten minutes from the fridge. This one go for, not because you'll want it cold to stamp down on it, but you'll need time to handle this one. If you haven't the time to sip and pay attention walk away.
This beer is high in the fruit notes area, most notably grape of course, but also something Bing cherry and cantaloupe. There is an earthy quality to it, not so much like dirt or clay but just a weight that keeps it from being a series of high notes with a sweet dreggy bottom it owns and earns it's bottom end. The saffron is to be honest lost on me for such an expensive priced ingredient it ought be there. That said i haven't a clue how to make such a low key spice show up in beer my self. there is also this somewhere between wonderful and terrifying thing at the back of the palette on the finish it is like flaming sugar right as you swallow, it's brief. if it lasted I'd describe it as toxic, and if it were shorter I'd be annoyed by it's missing the mark, but it is a lovely fiery and sweet finish that makes more of such a sweet beer necessary
All in all, this beer is not for casual drinking don't pack a cooler full for the fishing trip. Sit back pay attention and you might find some amazing stuff in here but you have to be ready to work at it, this beer is a prima donna. A prima donna who I will dutifully sing the praises of, but recognize she is a Prima donna.
Gilgamesh was here
dan
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