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You may remember way back in November of ‘07 when a study was released which claimed that natives of Central America were drinking alcoholic beverages — or beer — made from cacao (the seeds which chocolate comes from) even before 1000 BC, 500 years earlier than previously thought.

Well now it looks like label-pushing brewer Dogfish Head is going to recreate that recipe. As I’m sure you know, over the past few years, Sam Calagione — owner, founder and brewer of Dogfish — and the rest of his brewing team have been working with the University of Pennsylvania’s molecular archaeology department on finding and recreating beers of from ancient times. So far the folks at Dogfish have created Midas Touch, brewed from a recipe found in the drinking vessels of the Midas’ tomb and Chateau Jiahu, a 9000-year-old Chinese recipe dating back to the Neolithic period.

But come September, Dogfish will add another beer to that list - Theobroma, which translates to “food of the gods,” in Greek. Theobroma is, you guessed it, a recreation of that central American recipe for the earliest alcoholic chocolate drink in existence, consumed by the Aztecs.

“Before we were eating chocolate, we were drinking it,” Calagione said. “In ancient central America, cocoa was considered to be a very divine and sought-after ingredient.”

Theobromais made by combining cocoa nibs, powder and honey with chilies and seeds of the annatto tree. While chocolate beers are nothing new (think Sam Adams Chocolate Bock, the Rogue Chocolate Stout, etc. etc.) but, according to Calagione,

“Mainly with other chocolate beers, you have brewers incorporating chocolate powder into their own modern recipes,” Calagione said, “whereas this is based on molecular evidence. There’s science behind it!”

Look for Theobroma on store shelves in September.

source: Dogfish Head brews up ancient Aztec cocoa beer [mysuburbanlife.com]