DFH Palo Santo Marron
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...When I decided to have a week of Dogfish Head ales, I knew I was in for a treat. And of course I was also in for a kick in the pants, thanks to the ageability (read: high alcohol content) of Dogfish Head brews.
But the story behind Palo Santo Marron had me looking forward to experiencing this beer all week long.
Attempting to get at the aromatic heartwood. Source: Dogfish.com video
The New Yorker had a great article on extreme beer recently, throughout which Dogfish Head and founder Sam Calagione are featured. The article starts off with the story behind Palo Santo Marron.
But if you aren’t into reading, or if you only want to learn the story behind Palo Santo Marron, there’s a documentary video on the Dogfish Head website — complete with photos of a man who, after getting nowhere with a machete, gives up and shoots a Palo Santo tree with a .38 revolver!
A brief — if nowhere near as colorful or entertaining — version of the story behind the beer can be found on the bottle’s label, in which the ale is described as:
An unfiltered, unfettered, unprecedented Brown Ale aged in handmade wooden brewing vessels. The caramel and vanilla complexity unique to this ale comes from the exotic Paraguayan Palo Santo wood from which these tanks were crafted. At 10,000 gallons each, these are the largest wooden brewing vessels built in America since before Prohibition. It’s all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do too.
The beer actually pours with the look of a viscous imperial porter, and much of the nose carries the familiar roasted, java element. But there is also a high, herbal sweetness that weaves through the scent.
The ale starts with a taste reminiscent of a smokey porter, but that familiarity gives way when wood resins undulate across your tongue. The shift is aromatic; licorice laced with a tart vanilla and molasses, as if a hastily distilled bourbon were mixed into the brew.
According to the New Yorker article, the brown ale forming the base for Palo Santo Marron is “made with three kinds of hops, five kinds of wheat and barley, a dose of unrefined cane sugar, and a sturdy Scottish ale yeast.” The beer has 92 pounds of barley for every barrel (compared to 20 pounds for most industrial breweries and 40 pounds for most craft breweries), and the result is a potent beer (12% ABV) with more complexity and body, which is then aged in some wood so strong and oily it can be milled into ball bearings.
Amazingly unique, and possibly too unique for many — am I talking about the Palo Santo Marron, or Dogfish Head ales in general?
Exactly.
Today was my first experience with Palo Santo Marron, and I now love this beer. I’ve said it before, and throughout 2009 I’m sure I’ll say it again — beers like this make the pledge of drinking one beer a day with no repeats all year long an incredibly difficult undertaking.
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