Begin Brewing!

Quite a few years ago, Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione worked with Dr. Patrick (Pat) McGovern to re-create an ancient brew based on a chemical analysis of residue found in 9000-year-old pottery from the Jiahu region of China.  The analysis of that pottery showed a combination of residues from barley, honey, and rice, along with grape and/or hawthorn berry.  Using this information, Dogfish Head and "Dr. Pat" (as he's known to many people) created a beer they called Chateau Jiahu. This was a beer I was very fond of from the first sip.  It has a flavor that immediately invokes a combination of sake (rice wine), beer, and mead, with a mild sweetness from the hawthorn berry.  It's incredibly easy to drink despite the higher ABV. Dr. Pat's book Ancient Brews - Rediscovered and Recreated   contains a malt-extract-based recipe to recreate the beer. I brewed a batch of this a while back , and it turned out quite well.  For this batch, I'm swapping out...

A finished bottle of Chateau El Dorado As I mentioned in yesterday's post on brewing a Ta Henket clone, another of my most-favorite Dogfish brews is Chateau Jiahu. This beer is loosely based on an ancient recipe for beer from China, uncovered by Dr. Patrick McGovern and published in his book  Ancient Ales: Rediscovered and Re-Created .  I bought the ingredients I needed, thinking that I had some Simcoe hops around from a previous brew (but didn't). Substitution Time When it came down to brew day, I discovered that there were three things I couldn't readily get my hands on at the time:  sake yeast, white grape concentrate, and Simcoe hops. I thought I had Simcoe in my freezer, but didn't.  I did have some El Dorado hops, which aren't a recognized substitute for Simcoe but sound like they might be interesting in this beer. I didn't have another use planned for them, so they made the ingredient list. White grape juice concentrate was something I'd s...