Bureau archaeologists confirm: a 2,700-year-old beverage has been reanimated, and it’s 9% ABV. Dogfish Head Midas Touch, the Milton, Del., brewery’s beer-wine-mead hybrid, returns beginning Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, on draft and in 12-oz 6-pack cans, according to a Dogfish Head press release issued Oct. 15.
The release calls it the brewery’s most-requested rare beer.
Where Dogfish Head Midas Touch lands first
Dogfish Head’s Delaware locations will pour and sell it this week, the release says, while the beer makes its way to “taps and shelves across select states from coast-to-coast.” The brewery does not list those states; its Fish Finder locator is the place to check.
What’s in the bottle-turned-can
Midas Touch is brewed with barley, honey, white Muscat grapes and saffron, and clocks in at 9.0% ABV. In the brewery’s description, it is “a sweet yet dry brew” that is “medium-bodied and lightly warming,” with “sweet notes of honey and orchard fruits, complemented by a subtle, earthy spice and a crisp, vinous finish.”
The Bureau’s review of that recipe card: honey for the mead, Muscat grapes for the wine, barley for the beer. Three Earth beverage categories in one can, and the saffron is there to make sure nobody calls it simple.
Reanimating King Midas’ drink
The recipe traces to the excavation of King Midas’ tomb in what is now Türkiye. The late biomolecular archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the Penn Museum analyzed residue in a preserved drinking vessel and worked out the probable ingredients. Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione worked with McGovern to bring it “back from the dead,” and Dogfish Head Midas Touch debuted in 1999, launching the brewery’s Ancient Ales series.
Of all our rare beers, Midas Touch is by-far the most beloved by drinkers.
Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head brewer and founder
Calagione added that fans have been “begging us to bring this deliciously complex beer back.”
The rest of the Ancient Ales
After Dogfish Head Midas Touch proved the concept, the brewery kept digging. The release names three later recreations, also developed with McGovern:
- Chateau Jiahu (10%): a 9,000-year-old Chinese recipe with orange blossom honey, Muscat grape juice, barley malt and hawthorn fruit.
- Ta Henket (4.5%): an ancient Egyptian recipe with wheat, hearth-baked bread, chamomile, doum-palm fruit and Middle Eastern herbs.
- Kvasir (10%): a 3,500-year-old Danish recipe with red winter wheat, bog-grown berries, honey, birch syrup and herbs.
Dogfish Head is a Boston Beer Company brand. Earthlings who want to taste the tomb should move quickly: rare releases are, by definition, rare. More details are on the Dogfish Head Midas Touch page.
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