Bottle/Tap: Bottle
As usual, it wouldn’t be a month if I didn’t review at least one Dogfish Head brew, and this is a good one. Palo Santo is Spanish for ‘Holy Wood’. Typically found in South America, this phrase can refer to several different species of tree. This wood was used to create beer barrels able to hold 10,000 gallons each in the time before Prohibition. Nowadays, 10,000 gallons is nothing, but 100 years ago, that was an incredible capacity for brewing.
This beer is dark; you would have thought I poured molasses into my glass. At 12% I could smell the alcohol, and I noticed a sweet, almost caramel aroma. I had a drink and found it to be very smooth with no real bitter taste to it at all. You might say that it was creamy and swished nicely in my glass.
I had this chilled from the basement and noticed that the beer tasted much better as it got closer to room temperature. I haven’t always been a fan of brown ales, but this one was a pleasant surprise for me. I just imagined what a 10,000 gallon wooden barrel filled with beer looked like, then I held on to that image and had another drink. I was glad that I kept eating dinner; something this strong on an empty stomach would spell trouble.
Now, I don’t know the entire history, if Dogfish Head found these barrels and began using them again or just reconstructed them and continued the brewing process. I would imagine that during Prohibition these barrels would have been destroyed, but those are questions to find answers for on another day.
Have fun with this brown ale or hit Strangebrew (my favorite NH watering hole) and order a Raison D’Etre, another Dogfish favorite.
