REVIEW: Dogfish Head Urkontinent

Another day, another exciting experimental beer from Dogfish. Today's beer is called Urkontinent. Urkontinent refers to the mega continent that existed in prehistoric times prior to continental drift. A concept that I've always found kind of fascinating. And in the spirit of a time where traversing the globe was a whole lot easier Urkontinent is brewed using different spices. One from each continent in fact. Well, except for Antarctica. What is it with this guys and slacking n agriculture? But anyways, Dogfish actually collaborated with Google to come up with the different spices for each continent. A very cool video about the creation of this beer can be found here, recommended. The spices at work in this big hearty dubbel are wattleseed from Australia, toasted amaranth from South America, rooibos tea from Africa, myrica gale from Europe and honey from the good old U.S. of A. Now, I know what honey is, but I haven't the foggiest what any of the others are let alone what kind of flavors they're going to impart to the beer. But Dogfish hasn't let me down yet. To the beer!

Urkontinent pours a deep, dark, sultry brown. There ate some lovely ruby red highlights to be found in there when held to light. A tall, finely bubbled head sits atop. It recedes fairly quickly but remains as a persistent rim.

The nose starts off with aromatic notes of roasty, bitter dark chocolate and a nice herbal spiciness. Joining the party are hints at a slightly burnt candied sugar quality and plenty of dark fruit. Hints of plum, date, and raisin add to the complexity. There are also slight hints of roasted grain and a bit of creamy coffee.

A full, tart fruitiness leads the way with notes of cherry, plum, red grape, in what is a pretty hefty medium to heavy body. That tartness lingers as the flavors give way to a subtle dark cgocolate hint and a very faint, spicy/ peppery character. As the beer warms a subtle herbal hop flavor emerges as well as some interesting licorice notes. Urkontinent is very dry for such a big bodied, malty beer.

I enjoyed this one too. Like I said before, I'm not exactly what all of those spices in this beer are doing and how those flavors manifest, but it works! This is a very complex, yet still quite drinkable Belgian style dubbel. I just wish the bottles weren't so pricy, I'd love to have more of this.

HD