Dogfish Head just shipped another batch of Namaste. The beer – more than just a hippie saying, is a witbier brewed with dried organic orange slices, lemongrass and a bit of coriander. Available in 750ml bottles.
Dogfish Head’s Noble Rot is just about to start shipping. Don’t let the name throw you. This beer melds biology, anthropology, geography, and grapes. Check out the video above for a cool introduction to this creation. Press Release below.
Clay is Continue Reading →
Dogfish Head has just started rolling embossed bottles off the line. Check out this pic of iconic fish embellishment on the 750ml bottles.
Dogfish Head Tweason’ale, a gluten-free beer, has just shipped from the brewery. Keeping with tradition, Sam Calagione does a “quick sips” tasting of the new beer. Tweason is the first new 4 pack beer that they have released in over Continue Reading →
Meet Sofa King Hoppy. A custom built hopping tool built by the beer geniuses at Dogfish Head Brewing.
I have a small Op-Ed coming this week. I don’t do Op-Eds often, but sometimes there are just a couple of thoughts I want to put out there. The Op-Ed is on beer geeks, beer drinking, & a few personal Continue Reading →
Dogfish Head’s commerical rezoning was approved yesterday by the Milton Town Council. The rezoning will allow Dogfish to build on the 39-acre parcel of land they purchased years ago.
“They’re good stewards of the town,” said Milton Mayor Cliff Newlands.
Neighbors of Continue Reading →
Dogfish Head just shipped another batch of Namaste. The beer – more than just a hippie saying, is a witbier brewed with dried organic orange slices, lemongrass and a bit of coriander. Available in 750ml bottles.
Dogfish Head’s Noble Rot is just about to start shipping. Don’t let the name throw you. This beer melds biology, anthropology, geography, and grapes. Check out the video above for a cool introduction to this creation. Press Release below.
Clay is the perfect material for capturing time in a bottle. As molecular biologists have discovered by unearthing ancient tombs, organic residue trapped in porous chards of pottery reveals quite a bit about what our ancestors drank on the special occasions of burial feasts.
It’s interesting that thousands of years ago — in places such as Turkey, China and Central America — these momentous occasions were celebrated with hybrid beverages. These alchemistic mixes incorporated exotic ingredients like saffron and hawthorn fruit with multiple sugar sources like honey, grapes, rice and barley.
As often as we look forward and innovate, Dogfish Head has looked backward for inspiration as we explored ancient recipes like Midas Touch, circa 1740 B.C., in Turkey and Chateau Jiahu, circa 7000 B.C., in China.
Now we are bringing this hybrid concept into the future with Noble Rot.
“This is the absolute closest to equal meshing of the wine world and the beer world that’s ever been done commercially,” says Dogfish Head Founder and President Sam Calagione.
For Noble Rot, 49.5% of the fermentable sugars come from grapes, and 50.5% come from grains. Two unique white wine grapes, sourced with our friends at Alexandria Nicole Cellars in Prosser, Wash., add complexity to this saison-esque science project.
The first addition is unfermented juice, known as must, from viognier grapes that have been infected with a benevolent fungus called botrytis. This “noble rot” reduces the water content in the grapes while magnifying their sweetness and complexity. The second is pinot gris must intensified by a process called “dropping fruit,” where large clusters of grapes are clipped to intensify the quality of those left behind.
“It’s been fascinating to watch the cross-pollination of wine and beer,” says Alexandria Nicole Founder Jarrod Boyle. “We’re excited to be involved in this.”
Noble Rot, which clocks in at 9% ABV, is brewed with pils and wheat malts and fermented with a distinct Belgian yeast strain. It has a spicy white wine body and a dry, tart finish.
Noble Rot will be available in 750-ml bottles ($12.99 MSRP) and on draft in the next few weeks. We are very excited to bring a beverage like this into the beer, food and wine worlds simultaneously.
Besides, we always wanted to see if a beer with the word “rot” in the name would actually sell.
Dogfish Head has just started rolling embossed bottles off the line. Check out this pic of iconic fish embellishment on the 750ml bottles.
Dogfish Head Tweason’ale, a gluten-free beer, has just shipped from the brewery. Keeping with tradition, Sam Calagione does a “quick sips” tasting of the new beer. Tweason is the first new 4 pack beer that they have released in over a half a decade.
Meet Sofa King Hoppy. A custom built hopping tool built by the beer geniuses at Dogfish Head Brewing.
I have a small Op-Ed coming this week. I don’t do Op-Eds often, but sometimes there are just a couple of thoughts I want to put out there. The Op-Ed is on beer geeks, beer drinking, & a few personal resolutions. Sam Calagione just spelled out part of my Op-Ed. Insufferable beer geeks need to read this. It’s brilliant. He posted it to a BeerAdvocate.com thread, where a reader spoke about over-rated breweries. It struck a nerve with Sam. Props, Sam.
It’s pretty depressing to frequently visit this site and see the most negative threads among the most popular. This didn’t happen much ten years ago when craft beer had something like a 3 percent market share. Flash forward to today, and true indie craft beer now has a still-tiny but growing marketshare of just over 5 percent. Yet so many folks that post here still spend their time knocking down breweries that dare to grow. It’s like that old joke: “Nobody eats at that restaurant anymore, it’s too crowded.” Except the “restaurants” that people shit on here aren’t exactly juggernauts. In fact, aside from Boston Beer, none of them have anything even close to half of one percent marketshare. The more that retailers, distributors, and large industrial brewers consolidate the more fragile the current growth momentum of the craft segment becomes. The more often the Beer Advocate community becomes a soap box for outing breweries for daring to grow beyond its insider ranks the more it will be marginalized in the movement to support, promote, and protect independent ,American craft breweries.
It’s interesting how many posts that refer to Dogfish being over-rated include a caveat like “except for Palo…except for Immort…etc.” We all have different palettes which is why it’s a great thing that there are so many different beers. At Dogfish we’ve been focused on making “weird” beers since we opened and have taken our lumps for being stylistically indifferent since day one. I bet a lot of folks agree that beers like Punkin Ale (since 1995) , Immort Ale (wood aged smoked beer) since 1995, Chicory Stout (coffee stout) since 1995 , Raison D’être (Belgian brown) since 1996, , Indian Brown Ale (dark IPA) since 1997, and 90 Minute (DIPA) since 2000 don’t seem very weird anymore. That’s in large part because so many people who have been part of this community over the years championed them and helped us put them on the map.These beers, and all of our more recent releases like Palo Santo, Burton Baton, Bitches Brew continue to grow every year. We could have taken the easy way out and just sold the bejeezus out of 60 Minute to grow but we like to experiment and create and follow our own muse. Obviously there is an audience that appreciates this as we continue to grow. We put no more “hype” or “expert marketing” behind our best selling beers than we do our occasionals. We only advertise in a few beer magazines and my wife Mariah oversees all of our twitter/Facebook/dogfish.com stuff. We have mostly grown by just sharing our beer with people who are into it (at our pub, great beer bars, beer dinners, and fests) and let them decide for themselves if they like it. If they do we hope they tell their friends about. We hope a bunch of you that are going to EBF will stop by our booth and try some of the very unique new beers we are proudly bringing to market like Tweason’ale (a champagne-esque, gluten-free beer fermented with buckwheat honey and strawberries) and Noble Rot (a sort of saison brewed with Botrytis-infected Viognier Grape must). One of these beers is on the sweeter side and one is more sour. Knowing each of your palettes is unique you will probably prefer one over the other. That doesn’t mean the one you didn’t prefer sucked. And the breweries you don’t prefer but are growing don’t suck either. Respect Beer. The below was my favorite post thus far.
This thread is hilarious. Seriously, Bells, Founders, FFF, Surly, RR, DFH, Bruery, Avery, Cigar City, Mikkeller are all overrated? Since I’m from Ohio, I’ll pile on and add Great Lakes, Hoppin Frog, and Brew Kettle to the list. Your welcome.
Hopefully soon we will have every craft brewery in the US on the list.
Editors Note: I love being from Delaware. That’s how we roll.
Dogfish Head’s commerical rezoning was approved yesterday by the Milton Town Council. The rezoning will allow Dogfish to build on the 39-acre parcel of land they purchased years ago.
“They’re good stewards of the town,” said Milton Mayor Cliff Newlands.
Neighbors of the nearby Cannery Village fought Dogfish Head’s request to rezone the land, citing fears of increased industrial traffic, and fears of the building’s future if the brewery moves. The rezone means great things for Dogfish Head, but the new vote still doesn’t thrill some of the residents.
“I think the town has been bullied,” said Cannery Village resident John Horan.
Not all residents spoke out against Dogfish Head –
“Dogfish came here as a good neighbor, they’ve been a good neighbor, they give back to the local community. … If the town is going to survive, we need those businesses,” said resident Paul Yannucci. “It’s going to mean a good future for this town moving forward.”
So what’s next?
Currently the brewery has to submit a site plan that has to be approved before anything can be built on site. New packaging lines & storage space are in future expansion plans. The total cost of the expansion is current estimated at $50 million. [DelawareOnline]
