And no, today's post hasn't turned this blog into an auto-mechanic forum. Dogfish Head Brewery, one of the premier craft breweries around, also has one of the widest variety of craft beers. One of these is Midas Touch. The recipe for the brew is a Turkish recipe similar to one supposedly found in the tomb of King Midas himself (go ahead, check out the Wiki article for this ancient Greek mythology here). Is this brew a royal flush, or more worthy to be flushed?
The bottle itself is pretty cool, and it stands out amongst the Dogfish line while keeping the trademark shark logo along the top of the bottle. Dogfish describes the brew as balancing between mead and wine and as props to the website also suggests some tasting notes we should be looking for inside the bottle. They include honey, saffron, papaya, melon, biscuity, and succulent (I question biscuity being a word but whatever).
It certainly pours light, and just looking at the picture above you can almost see that line Dogfish talked about as balancing between mead and wine. It's a light golden color, and gives off the faintest, almost dainty sweet aroma of a flower. So far, so good....
On the first sip I'm expecting some good ol' honey sweetness...and it's just not there! This is one crossdresser of a beer. It's a beer that wants to be a wine, or a wine that wants to be a beer. I want to say its refreshing but, for me, it's almost slightly offensive to the palate. It does have complicated flavors and distinct grape dryness with florals bordering close to what I'd expect to see in gin. It maintains a particular dryness throughout, for better or worse.
If you can tell through this review, I wasn't a huge fan of it. But I won't give this beer a bad rating just because I didn't like it. It's notable for it's ingenuity and I can see how this beer will appeal to different kind of folk throughout. As an aside, I also tasted this beer recently on tap and was more impressed by it flavors (yes I know, tap beer is tops anyway). The beer deserves at least a Imperial PINTRS, for ingenuity but for also missing some of the mark when translated to the bottle. Till next time!
