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"  So I&amp;#039;m sitting here with a bottle of Dogfish Head Sixty-One, which on the beer weirdness scale would seem to clock in at about a 9. First of all, it&amp;#039;s an IPA brewed with Syrah grape must \u2014 a fact that sends the mind reeling toward the many conceivable ways in which such a combination might constitute The Worst Idea Ever. What if it&amp;#039;s kind of like the time you watched someone drunkenly condense their wine into someone&amp;#039;s beer and drink it? That&amp;#039;s actually pretty much exactly how Sixty-One was born: Dogfish Head Founder Sam Calagione started pouring a little red wine into his friends&amp;#039; 60-minute IPAs. Somehow, nobody punched him. And now he&amp;#039;s bottling the stuff and offering it as the brand&amp;#039;s first new core beer since 2007. &amp;quot;I just hope it doesn&amp;#039;t taste like a Manischewitz cocktail,&amp;quot; worried my friend Ben, a habitual Dogfish Head drinker who has been alienated at times by some of the brand&amp;#039;s more out-there experiments. When it comes to wine/beer hybrids, this is not Dogfish Head&amp;#039;s first rodeo. The brewery has been focusing on the genre for about a decade, producing bottles like Noble Rot and Red &amp;amp;amp; White that have met with (mostly) positive reviews. And the wine/beer hybrid category is growing, with Allagash and Blue Moon among the breweries making their own versions. Sixty-One is not by a long shot the strangest beer to emerge from Dogfish Head, which has turned out brews inspired by ingredients unearthed from a 9,000 year old Chinese tomb, cribbed from Egyptian hyroglyphs, and created on the basis of pre-Christian pottery fragments. But it is remarkably experimental for a so-called &amp;quot;core beer&amp;quot; \u2014 the kind available year-round at major retailers, of which Dogfish Head has only eight. There are lots of elements about the release of Sixty-One that I can&amp;#039;t decide whether are bizarre and wonderful or just plain bizarre: like the fact that the label is painted by Calagione himself, out of pigments, beer, wine, and melted chocolate. Or that the beer&amp;#039;s release is being celebrated with a limited edition record by Bonnie &amp;quot;Prince&amp;quot; Billy, available at Dogfish Head&amp;#039;s Delaware brewery, which features a song about the beer plus a cover of &amp;quot;Sixty-Minute Man&amp;quot; on the B-side. I can&amp;#039;t tell you what the song sounds like, because like most 21st-century humans, I don&amp;#039;t own anything that will play vinyl. I can tell you that I met Calagione recently, and, for what it&amp;#039;s worth, you won&amp;#039;t find a warmer or more genuine man alive. These eccentricities which may border on shtick or calculated gimmick are actually, truly indicative of the man&amp;#039;s personality.  Anyway, about the beer. For the geeks: it&amp;#039;s a continually-hopped IPA with Syrah grape must added in during fermentation, such that the grape juice and wort ferment together. When you pop the top off Sixty-One, the first thing you&amp;#039;ll get is a whiff of cloying raspberry that puts you in mind of wine coolers, or at the very least something in Sam Adams Cherry Wheat territory. The color doesn&amp;#039;t help: Sixty-One is basically the same hue as that very cheap, very terrible rose wine that makes your teeth ache. So the first sip is a pleasant surprise: this beer has a decidedly dry, hoppy character, rounded out by a touch of fruitiness. It&amp;#039;s a great drink for anyone who finds IPAs punishingly bitter, as I often do \u2014 the grape must adds a complexity and gentle sweetness that smooth out some of an IPA&amp;#039;s sharp corners, transforming it into something reminiscent of a Belgian trippel. It&amp;#039;s easy drinking and balanced. Bonnie &amp;quot;Prince&amp;quot; Billy may have written the song on Sixty-One, but this beer is pure Lady Gaga: eccentric on the face of things, playing the rebel, but at its heart, a deeply conventional crowd-pleaser. Dogfish Head Sixty-One, $9.99 per four-pack; Dogfish.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a20399/dogfish-head-sixty-one-review-15189713/>