Sunday, January 5, 2014

Dogfish Head Birra Etrusca Bronze

It's a Dogfish Head kind of day!  We had planned to do a second Thursday Brew Session with DFH exclusive beers, but we haven't been able to get our acts together since the move.  We picked this guy up at World Market this morning and it is chilled and ready to go.  Before I start this one, I have to say that DFH is one of my very favorite breweries, not just for their brews but for their story and for the work that they've done for the world of craft beer.  Cheers Dogfish Head, we love you!

As you can see from the pictoral helper here, we aren't fully unpacked or 100% ready with the setup to be posting the most professional and beautiful of review photos yet, but give us a few weeks, we're trying!  The move went well and the Dobie and I are settling into our new digs quite nicely.  We love our shiny new 1970's built place, and it will be great for holding fun little tastings with friends!



Beer: Birra Etrusca Bronze
Brewery: Dogfish head
Style: Ancient Ale
ABV: 8.5%
Glass: Snifter

Appearance: Head pours about an inch high white that is quite thin and disappears quickly.  Beautiful  deep and clear amber color with sparkling red tones.

Aroma:  A grape-like aroma that in my mind might be a well-combined blend of the pomegranate and honey.  Reminds me somewhat of sweeter red table wines.  

Body & Texture: Lighter body that is made heavier by the intensity of the alcohol.  Relatively no fizz, a flatter smoother brew, which was evident by the quickly fading head.

Taste: And here we come to why it was a bad decision to buy a more expensive beer that had been sitting on the shelf at a brightly lit store - our alcohol seems to have gotten stressed out.  Flavors of fruit and wheat-flour are present in the start with the smoothness of honey in the finish, however there is also an ever-present slight ethyl-alcohol flavor that suggests stressed yeast, as has happened to us during brewing on several occasions.  I'm also getting a much higher alcohol flavor than I should from an 8.5% beer, and higher than I would expect from a DFH brew.

Overall: I need to try this one again to give a better review.  For now, I give it a 3/5, but I plan on acquire another from some dark cool corner of a better store sometime soon for a re-hash, as I'm not sure this is the best example I could find of this particular brew.  While the aromas and flavors were on par with what I would expect from an ancient ale, and promised to be quite tasty, there was definitely something wrong with this bottle - the prevalence of ethyl alcohol flavor and rapid drunk feeling off of my small tasting glass was enough to alert me to that.  Don't despair DFH lovers, I will never drop DFH out of my favorites list, but I'm not too sure about this particular brew.

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