Dogfish Head to host Ancient Ales chat in Milton Dec. 16
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, in collaboration with Dr. Pat McGovern, scientific director of the Biomolecular Archeology Project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and the Technical University of Munich Research Center Weihenstephan for Brewing and Food Quality, debuts Tree Thieves, a modern take on an ancient Celtic gruit-style beer, a fermented beverage the ancient Celts crafted in southwest Germany as early as the 6th millennium B.C.
Clocking in at 6.5% ABV, Tree Thieves is brewed using superheated rocks, flavored with botanicals and honey, and fermented using yeasts “thieved” from the sacred trees of the early denizens of southern German (formerly Celtic) forest regions. The result is a dark, copper-brown beer with aromas of dark fruit, sage, chamomile, smoke and honey. The beer’s aromas are complemented by lightly smoky and slightly tart flavors of toffee, dark caramel, herbs, bread crust, stewed fruit and sweet honey. Releasing on Friday, Dec. 16, Tree Thieves will be available for $15 per 500ml bottle (only 600 available) exclusively at Dogfish Head’s coastal Delaware locations, the Tasting Room & Kitchen in Milton and Brewings & Eats in Rehoboth, while supplies last.
“It was great fun to work with Dr. Pat to resurrect yet another Ancient Ale together, and to have such an experienced and diverse group of experts involved with this historically significant collaboration made it extra poignant,” said Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder and brewer. “It’s fair to say we are now collectively as thick as thieves.”
To celebrate the launch of Tree Thieves, Dogfish Head will host a special Ancient Ales chat at 6 p.m., Dec. 16, at the brewery’s Milton Tasting Room & Kitchen. Both Sam Calagione and McGovern will be in attendance to discuss their longtime history of collaboration and the creation of Tree Thieves.
“Our ancient Celtic brew represents the apotheosis of our Ancient Ales program, the first of its kind, that Sam and I began over 20 years ago,” said McGovern. “Tree Thieves, the 10th in the series, has similar origins to our first and most awarded brew, Midas Touch. Both are extreme fermented beverages - combining barley, wheat, honey and native herbs - that ultimately derive from Indo-European cultures of the Neolithic period, some 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Although Gordion in central Turkey, home to Midas Touch, is separated by over 1,500 miles from Hochdorf in southwest Germany that provided the main inspiration for Tree Thieves, the archeological and other scientific evidence for the re-creations of both brews came from huge burial mounds (so-called tumuli) for the rulers, who were ushered into the afterlife with funerary feasts highlighted by serving very similar mixed beverages in magnificent metal vessels.”
For more information, go to dogfish.com, penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology and blq-weihenstephan.de/en/.
