Chateau Jiahu

Before getting too into this review I think it is essential to post dogfish heads write up on chateau Jiahu since the creamy nectar in your glass is one part beer to two parts history lesson. As per their own write-up:

Let's travel back in time again (Midas Touch was our first foray), this time 9000 years! Preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic village of Jiahu, in Henan province, Northern China, has revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced that long ago - right around the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East! 

Fast forward to 2005... Molecular Archeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of PA calls on Dogfish Head to re-create their second ancient beverage and Chateau Jiahu is born.

In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used pre-gelatinized rice flakes, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers. The rice and barley malt were added together to make the mash for starch conversion and degradation. The resulting sweet wort was then run into the kettle. The honey, grapes, Hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers were then added. The entire mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, and then cooled. The resulting sweet liquid was pitched with a fresh culture of Sake yeast and allowed to ferment a month before the transfer into a chilled secondary tank.

For me right off the bat this beer had several things going for it already. First of all the label art is great and makes for a nice addition to my collection of empty bottles from limited edition brews. Second, I have a love for science and if science can resurrect a millennia old recipe for beer, well our civilization must be doing something right.

As far as the beer itself goes it really caught me by surprise despite being well aware of the ingredients. Perhaps the best part of this beer is the initial pour into a wide hefeweizen glass, creating a film of fleeting miniature bubbles in the head but releasing a huge waft of pleasant aroma, such as wine, honey, cloves and that little bit of sake alcoholic smell. The beer was tinted a handsome copper red with tiny trails of effervescence making their way to the surface along the edges of the glass. Once tasted my first impression was that of a malt liquor, or a flavored sake, maybe even an alcoholic smoothie. Its bitter backbone served as a good reference point to explore the areas of this drink such as the rice and honey sweetness, the herbal complexities of its aftertaste and of course the fruit that made up the majority of its flavor. Still this is not a beer for everyone, most hopheads will want to stay away while people looking for wine cooler sweetness will be disgusted by the pungent tartness of the tannins flavors. Even for one as open minded as myself I found it a bit cloying and recommend sharing the pint with at least two more people.