By Katherine Weadley

Redstone Review

DENVER – Do mummies get thirsty? Just in case they do Wynkoop Brewery is offering a special beer in honor of the arrival of the Denver Art Museum’s Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs exhibit. The exhibit opened June 29^th and the beer is already flowing at the Wynkoop.

Andy Brown, the head brewer at Wynkoop, invented the beer. “We wanted to create a beer,” Brown says, “that echoed what ancient Egyptian royalty might have consumed back in Tut’s day. It’s a hybrid beer inspired by Egyptian ingredients, but brewed with the benefit of 3,000 additional years of brewing science.”

“Ancient Egyptians were the first society to perfect the brewing process,” notes the Denver Art Museum’s Kristy Bassuener, “and legends say that the deity Osiris taught humans to make beer for ceremonial and after-work sipping.”

”Wynkoop Brewing Company’s brew masters channeled Osiris with this beer,” Bassuener adds. “It will make patrons feel like Egyptian royalty and help engage exhibit goers in our citywide King Tut celebration.”

The Wynkoop Brewing Company is well known for its beer but is also known as the brewery that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper began in 1988. The brewery was also founded by a group of urban pioneers that included March Schiffler, who is the chief operations officer and current general manager Ron Robinson.

Tut’s Royal Gold beer is an unfiltered “Imperial Egyptian Ale” of about 6 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). It is made with pale malts, ancient fermentables including honey, wheat and teff. The list of spices includes tamarind, coriander, grains of paradise, orange peel and rose petals. The beer is fermented with a wheat beer yeast.

According to Marty Jones, spokesman for Wynkoop Brewery, Tut’s Royal Gold features a translucent gold color, spicy nose and soft body. “The beer’s malt and wheat notes are accented by nuanced layers of flavor from the beer’s many spices,” he says.

From June 30 through September consumers who purchase Tut’s Royal Gold and any other Wynkoop beer at Wynkoop Brewing Company and its allied establishments get a coupon for $3 off a ticket to the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

The Wynkoop expects the beer to be on draft for at least the next six to eight weeks at the Wynkoop Brewery. For more information on the beer visit www.wynkoop.com and for information on the exhibit visit www.kingtut.org.

Katherine Weadley is a free lance writer and a librarian. She worked as a reporter for the Daily Camera in Boulder. She lives in Lyons with her family and two dogs Wolfe and Winter.

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