Friday, May 11, 2012

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery - Urkontinent

If you've read this blog before, you know that I'm a really, really big fan of Dogfish Head's beers. Over the past year and a half or so, I've been on a mission to try just about everything they have to offer. I thought I was getting close until I walked into Bottlecraft recently and saw...another new beer from Dogfish Head! I can't keep up with these guys. This one sounded absolutely amazing so I had to give it a try. Here's the story behind it, according to Dogfish Head.

"Urkontinent is a social collaboration of worldwide proportions.

The seed was planted when Dogfish Head asked beer-­‐loving tech types around the globe to suggest ingredients for a new off-­‐centered ale.

A small team from the brewery (and
a few of our beer-­‐loving tech friends) then narrowed the list to five: wattleseed from Australia, toasted amaranth from South America, rooibos tea from Africa, myrica gale from Europe and honey from the United States.

The name Urkontinent, a German word for the theory that all of the continents were once connected, is a shoutout to the worldly recipe and ideas that make up this beer. The careful combination of ingredients gives this Belgian dubbel complex coffee and chocolate-­covered cherry notes."

Sounds a tad like another beer they make, Pangaea, but this is still a really cool idea. And wattle seed? Myrica Gale? Where do they find these ingredients?

 Urkontinent pours a deep brown color with garnet highlights. A thin light brown head caps the beer and stuck around for the entire beer. I wish that I could have had the ingredients they used in this beer next to me, because I got a blast of crazy smells when I first smelled it and I had absolutely no idea what they were. Here were some smells I could pick out: powdery chocolate, roasted malt, toasted brown sugar, hazelnut and a touch of spicy rooibos. This beer smells absolutely amazing.

The taste opens with a good amount of malty sweetness and a touch of nuttiness along with some Belgian yeast. A touch of cayenne in the middle leads to a finish of molasses, chocolate, dark fruit and some rye bread. I don't know how Dogfish did it, but they took another batch of extreme ingredients and made another fantastic beer. I can't wait for the next one!

Final Grade: A-

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 38

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