Dogfish Head - Ancient Ales Glass

The glass is from the Ancient Ale Dinner DFH did across the US a few years back. You got the glass, a keychain bottle opener, a stone coaster and one other item with your ticket to the dinner.

http://hopglass.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-ancient-glasswhale.html?m=1

https://www.dogfish.com/blog/turn-back-time-our-ancient-ales-dinner-series

 

They can be hit or miss.... I have had a few I have enjoyed, and some that were really tough to drink. It is a really interesting idea, and respect that a lot. I wouldn't spend too much to get them though.

 

As far as I know the only surviving member of the Ancient Ales series available now is Midas Touch. Chateau Jiahu I remember liking and at 10% it's probably the one to get.

 

As you probably noticed, most of the Ancient Ales are listing by Dogfish as "Occasional Rarities." Roughly what that has meant over the years is that they have not been totally retired but are only brewed once in a while and when is unpredictable from outside the brewery as to when that might happen. When they are going to do one of those Rarities we can often find out in advance when they publish their annual release schedule. (I typically check sometime in Dec-Jan timeframe.)

The Ancient Ales are all based on a collaboration with a Biomolecular Archaeologist Named Patrick McGovern who has spent his career studying ancient alcoholic beverages.

As for whether you should spend the time, money, and hassles to get some of these, I'd suggest one source of information would be the written reviews on this site for the beers that have been released and seen distribution.

Here's a bit of information about McGovern and his work:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-beer-archaeologist-17016372/

This Ancient Ales series all got started several years back in Philadelphia at a Beer Dinner during "Book and Cook" week with the late Michael Jackson (of beer fame) acting as Master of Ceremonies. McGovern had collected the dried residue from a very very old drinking vessel and proposed a challenge/invitation to at least some of the brewers attending the dinner that they visit lab and talk about recreating the beverage since he already knew it was beer rather than wine.

The only real interest was from Sam Caligione at Dogfish Head who, in collaboration with McGovern, took on the challenge of brewing a modern day recreation of what King Midas might have been drinking back in the day. The commitment was to make as much use as possible of the ingredients McGovern had identfied in his molecular analyses. They did so with very very few substitutions (and with the admixture of some hops so it could be sold as beer in the United States). The result was Midas Touch, the most successful of Ancient Ale series. Chateau Jiahu was based on the discovery of a 9,000 year old Chinese container that was still sealed and still contained liquid.

Their collaboration has continued periodically over several years and McGovern has given mulitiple talks about his work, which includes his "experimental archaeology" work with Dogfish Head.

Here is a link to a short interview with McGovern that includes some about ancient ales.



A search under "Patrick McGovern" on YouTube will bring up several more videos of McGovern's talks, etc.

E.g., this link is to a talk given remotely at a conference of Archeologists with much more detail on the work.

McGovern talks to other Archiologists.