Dogfish Head Night at Barcade Jersey City

This past Thursday night, the Jersey City incarnation of Barcade hosted Dogfish Head Night with craft beer rockstar Sam Calagione in attendance. As you can imagine, this event was packed to the gills with beer aficionados of all varieties hoping to be able to share a toast with the man behind the fish.



Barcade brought out some fine Dogfish beers from their stash for this event including 2009 Fort, 2009 Burton Baton and 2009 Theobroma. Not to mention the always crowd-pleasing 120 Minute IPA and the brand-new limited offering Noble Rot, a near fifty-fifty mix of beer & wine and my favorite of the night. Unfortunately for some who came later in the night, kegs were kicking as early as 7:30pm including the Noble Rot and 120. People drink good beer quickly? Shocker.



The New Jersey Craft Beer crew get a photo with the maven himself. (L to R: Brian, Os, some dude named Sam, Marek, Heather, Dan, myself)



Sam made a brief but impassioned speech about raising our glasses to all of the craft brewers out there that have made nights like that possible. He's really quite the wordsmith and you can see why he's attained the rock star status that he has. Plus, the beers are pretty fine.

Dogfish Head Faithfull Ale Release at Blue Palms Brewhouse in L.A.

Dogfish Head Faithfull Ale and Bitches Brew

Last night in Los Angeles, Blue Palms Brewhouse celebrated the release of Dogfish Head's newest beer, Faithfull Ale. Here's the brewery's description:

Faithfull Ale is a celebration of Pearl Jam's 20th anniversary as a band and its extraordinary debut album, "Ten." In recognition of these milestones, this Belgian-style golden ale is delicately hopped to 20 IBUs and fruit-forward from 10 incremental additions of black currants over a one-hour boil. Faithfull will clock in at 7% ABV.

Normally I stick to East Coast coverage save for the occasional beer trip but good friend Josh was able to be convinced to stop by and take some beertography of the event. I have yet to pick up a bottle of this newest release, but I'm hoping to do so soon.


It was a packed house at the Blue Palms Brewhouse, one of my favorite beer bars in L.A.

The Faithfull Ale kicked early on in the night.

Biking For a Cause...and For Beer! An Interview with The Foodcyclist

John "Sussy" Suscovich aka The Foodcyclist recently walked away from his full-time job as a light board operator for Howard Stern to ride his bicycle around the world, promoting organic farming and healthy foods. After hearing about his trip on The Howard Stern Show and myself being a fan of all things organic, John's trip really intrigued me and I began following him on twitter. Soon after, he was tweeting from Yards, Victory and Flying Dog breweries... He was doing a whirlwind Northeast brewery tour and all from his bike! Interest: piqued.

A visit to the Dogfish Head Brewery & Brewpub

This past Friday, I made the journey down to Delaware to visit the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, DE and their brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, DE. This was my second time visiting the production brewery, but the first since their recent face-lift. To get down there, my friend Jeff and I took the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, which required us to get up at 6:30am. Ouch. But relaxing with a 9am Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA on the boat was more than enough of a reward for being up so early (insert 5 o'clock somewhere joke here). Plus, it was a beautiful day.



This awesome backdrop of the sun-soaked Delaware Bay was too much awesome to not take advantage of and thus, a photo shoot with the 60 Minute inevitably ensued..



One other ferry passenger took notice of all of the photos I was snapping of the beer and remarked "must be one helluva beer!" I confirmed that it was and noticed that there were a lot of people imbibing at that early hour, yet we were the only people drinking Dogfish. That would remain the case on the ferry ride home later that night as well. Shame.



After safely landing in Lewes, DE, we hit the road on our way to make our booking for the 11am brewery tour. After snarling along Route 1 (summer traffic in DE is rough) we managed to park at the brewery a few minutes after 11, run in and join the tour already in progress.





Our main motivation for another trip was to see what they had done to the exterior of the building; the new tasting room and the new huge fermenters installed outside. Above you see the grist mill on the right and kettles at the back wall. Not much had changed here. There were also Johnny Cask 75 Minute IPA firkins awaiting filling as well.



Oak tank! The fermentation room also looked pretty much the same from the last visit.



Oak tank and Palo Santo Tank on the left, 400 barrel fermenters on the right.



By far the most obvious change was in their entrance and tasting room/gift shop. It used to be so that you'd walk directly into the tasting room which felt much like a sectioned-off part of the brewery. Now you walk in and there's a waiting area along with a receptionist desk with a doorway to the tasting room to your left. Definitely a much nicer layout. We also caught a glimpse of the camera crews for the new Discovery Channel show based around owner Sam Calagione.







The room is centered around the tasting bar which that day was pouring My Antonia, Raison D'Etre, Sah'Tea and Palo Santo Marron. You can also see they have plenty of beer to go, so we picked up some My Antonia, Wrath of Pecant (what's the deal with the T?)* and Dogfish's version of the Saison Du Buff.

*UPDATE: Thanks to Mariah Calagione on Twitter for the explanation on why its "Pecant", check it out here!



Here you can see the new fermenters and what seems to be plenty space for further expansion. Not to mention the newly re-poured Bocci Ball courts.



Then there's the newest installment, a steampunk style treehouse! Very cool. It was closed, but we fantasized that there was a tap line running up at the top.

From there we ventured to the brewpub in Rehoboth and had a fantastic meal paired with some delicious DFH beers. We had the Zeno and Portamarillo, both brewpub exclusives, and the cask 75 Minute IPA, which is (shockingly) a blend of the 90 and 60 Minutes.



A 60 Minute on the ferry ride back while watching the sun set brought us full circle, and was the best way to bid adieu to Delaware.

Dogfish Head & BeerAdvocate Collaboration - Smoking the Malt!

This is a cool little video from BA showing how they're smoking malt for their upcoming collaboration brew, exclusively available at Extreme Beer Fest in Boston, MA.

Delaware Trip Part 1

A few weeks ago, I was able to visit the Dogfish Head Brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, DE for the third time. Every time I go there, it inspires me more to open my own brewpub. Excellent beers, great food and a beach right down the street. You really can't go wrong with that equation.



Another great thing about the trip to Delaware is the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. A nice 80 minute trip across Delaware Bay that serves Dogfish Head 60 Minute on board? Yes please.



This image above is a teaser for Part 2. Let's just say that those beers were consumed...very quickly.

Dogfish Head Tank

Taken October 4th, 2008 by The Beertographer at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware.