Dogfish Head Unveils Mixed Media

I fully understand your conundrum, Obviously the 1516 beer purity act does not mean anything to most people today. Today there is even alcohol water! I kid you not. Bartles and Jaymes was a malt based beverage with some wine added. Arrogance aside ,a wine beer spritzer is not beer in my opinion. I tried DFH Midas touch and it was OK. If you enjoy it is all that really matters anyway. Cheers>>

 

Absolutely love a Midas.

Will give it a shot.

Even if not your thing— DFH beers are well made. Always worth a shot.

 

I mean, look at how creatively stifled Germany was for a very, very long time because of the Reinheitsgebot (and I'm one of the biggest lovers of German brewing history and culture on the site).

I have seen the alcoholic tonic water you're talking about, and no one is arguing that it is beer. Similarly, no one thinks Bartles and Jaymes is beer. They're flavored malt beverages, which, on a very technical level, all beer with any sort of added flavor is, I guess.

I don't get why you feel the need to demean Mixed Media as a spritzer, when it is clearly not that. It's a beer/wine hybrid. This type of attitude just makes you look stuffy. very "get off my lawn." Do you view the Bruery Wineification as a spritzer? What about Cantillon St. Lamvinus? Are gruits beer? My point is that when you start drawing lines it gets pretty messy pretty quickly.

As to why I exclude Bartles and Jaymes et al from being called beers, I unfortunately don't have a good answer, since I believe they legally are beers. It appears that the TTB actually regulates "malt beverages" more strictly than "beers," per this ruling from 2008. What to make of this, I don't know. How to actually draw the line, I don't know, but I think there's no doubt that Mixed Media is a beer both in the legal sense and the colloquial sense.

 

Late harvest viognier is an interesting choice, I like the sound of it. I'll try it if I see it, why the hell not?

 

It was first added to the DFH line up in 1999 and has been a year round flagship offering for most of the years since then.

That would suggest it sells quite well.

It used saffron in addition to hops so it could hit the minimum hopping required by law for it to be called a beer.

 

The original RHG only applied to beers brewed in what is now Bavaria and was pretty much ignored throughout the rest of what is now Germany until the later 1800s.

The rest of the world has pretty much always ignored the RHG.

 

Especially Belgium and the US, which many consider two of the greatest beer nations in the world.