Chataeu Jiahu

Tasted on Sunday night after constructing four vegetable pizzas from scratch. Complete with avocado, spinach, mushroom, onion, pico de gallo, and tomato. Thank's to Jeff Rice for getting me this for Christmas!

Appearance: Golden colored with a yellow orange tint. Honey looking? Some haze inhibits total clarity. Very turbid with carbonation bubbles. The beer has a strong white foamy head that is well sustained. Lacing it thick and somewhat wet. Dissipation ultimately results in a foam film head.
Aroma: Pungent and flowery. There is a farmhouse Belgium spice to this beer along with some mild spices and honey. After rain foresty smell. Some fermented mead/honey aroma that is somewhat vinous and acetic.
Taste: Very sweet and honey'd with some aspects of dried apricot. Quite mead like. There is a clove spicing mid-taste. The flavors are very intense with a crisp tartness similar to basic lagers, but it is more complexed with alternative things going on. Drying tannin rich finish and a mead like depth. There isn't much malt barley going on here. denser in flavor. The strange finish, estery and fruity. Some pilsner like sweetness is also accompanied by that lagered flavor. Both earthy with some saison-like character.
Mouthfeel: As you swallow, there is somewhat of a stickiness as the beer goes down. Heavier body contradicted from its appearance. Medium carbonation that really carries the beer. Feel is cloying between the tongue and cheek.
Overall Impression: Extremely sweet with a dwindling sticky sensation on the tongue. I like this beer, but it wasn't overwhelmingly spectacular. It gets me thinking, I highly doubt that any of the beverages back then tasted anything remotely similar. 9000 years ago it was probably a lot more watery and soured, and people used the spices to mask those soured sensations. 90 centuries later, in order to infiltrate the market, something big, sweet, and far out needed to be constructed in order to be palatable to the public. Interesting drink, certainly not to be expected to taste like beer. Just think of it as a sweet nectar of ambrosia...