Dogfish Head Theobroma

Brewed by Dogfish Head Brewery
Style: Traditional Ale
Milton, Delaware USA

on tap at the washington st ale house, wilmington DE. body is hazy deep dark yellow gold, and the head is thick foamy off-white. aroma is thick honey, hot cayenne pepper, pale malts, rum and vodka. flavor appears boozy heat at first, but it’s really a combination of the chili pepper and ABV like a dry rum/vodka blend. honey sweetness almost approaches cloying. a bit like a chardonnay. can’t taste the cocoa.

Pours dark orangish with a mostly receding off-white head. Notes of spicy toffee, chocolate, chiles, toffee and brown sugar. Medium to full bodied with soft carbonation. Interesting, perhaps a bit mild though.

Amber in color with a bit of white head. Arom is chocolate and strawberries. Taste is the same with a muddle of flavors in between the two. Aspartame sweetness in the finish is odd, if not cloying. $12/750

A very good experiment from dogfish head and one I wouldn’t mind having regularly. Not nearly as outlandish as it’s ingredients would have you believe with only a light hint of the chili peppers and chocolate. Tastes a little boozy a first but goes down easier as you go along. I only wish they had smaller bottles.

Tallahassee, Fl. - Market Square Liquors - 750 ml bottle. Murky, medium orange pour with not much of a head. Aroma has some brief honey notes, a hint of tea, and a faint glimpse of ginger. Flavor has some sweet fruity accents to it with a nectar-like quality to it. Hints of nectarines, pomegranates, ginger and a bit of alcohol. Mouthefeel is somewhat chewy. Not sure what the target was - but it missed the mark. Nice diversion though.

750ml bottle. Pours a hazy golden orange with a smallish white head that quickly diminishes to a thin film that leaves some lacing.

The aroma is some sweet malts, and spices - spicy cinnamon and tea.

The flavor is sweet malts with a little fruit and honey leading to a spicy (hot) cinnamon finish (red hots). It is a bit plasticy in the aftertaste, but warming from the spices and alcohol. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with average carbonation.

Overall, one of the more interesting spicy/chile beers I’ve had. I really love the background on these Dogfish beers - it brings out the geek in me.

2009 release; Sampled August 2009
A vigorous pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a four-finger thick, pale tan colored head. The beer is a rich copper color that shows a brilliantly clear, copper-gold color when held up to the light. The aroma has such a clean malt character to it that it smells like candied maltose; fairly sweet and a bit cloying in its simplicity, I seem to get this in a lot of Dogfish Heads stronger beers, a sort of house character. This has quite a bit of fruitiness to it, it reminds me of concentrated pears, green apple, a touch of honeydew melon and some green raisin notes. There is a touch of an artificial smell to the nose, not quite chemical like, but it is something that I can’t quite place; perhaps it is a touch of herbal honey character mixed with some phenolic fermentation character. Despite the complex promise of the ingredients, the nose ends up being fairly simplistic and completely lacking in the interesting ingredient list.

Soft and creamy feeling up front, the beer picks up a light prickle of carbonation as it moves across the tongue. The cocoa nibs / powder are non-existent at first, but then a faint, white-chocolate like note starts to creep in towards the finish. The finish has that sort of phenolic, chemical like note to it that I noticed in the nose. A touch of bitterness is barely noticeable and doesn’t do much to balance the sweetness. There is perhaps a hint of spice / chile heat to the finish; it isn’t noticeable until a couple seconds after the beer has left my mouth, and it is incredibly subtle (though it might be more noticeable to someone that doesn’t enjoy spicy food as much as I do). The sweetness reminds me of honey with an herbal bite, bad apple juice with a chemical aftertaste, and some sulfurous green raisins. While the sweetness isn’t overly excessive here, the lack of balancing bitterness or spice in this beer tends to make this beer lean towards the cloying side of the spectrum.

I was really excited to try this beer as the promise of a mix of cocoa, ancho chiles and ground annatto sounds really exciting, unfortunately both the aroma and flavor are almost devoid of these. The flavor does have the cocoa, and there is a touch of spice in the finish, but both are pretty tame. My expectations of this beer were a bit too much I think, I still think these ingredients could come up with a much more interesting beer. Unfortunately I didn’t really enjoy this beer all that much.

Aroma has some cocoa presence, as well as honey. Appearance is reddish gold with virtually no head. Flavor is spicy, dominated by the chilies, not much cocoa flavor at all. Palate is very lively, burns on the tongue. A mess.