Dogfish Head

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Tuck
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Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:09 pm
Location: Lawrence, KS

Dogfish Head

#1 Post by Tuck » Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:21 pm

Last weekend I got the opportunity to go to both the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, DE, and the Dogfish Brewings and Eats in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Both were a great experience and a lot of fun.

Brewery: Milton, DE

Brewery tour was a pretty standard tour with the history of the brewery and it's evolution from brewing 10 gallon batches at the brew pub 3-4 times a day 5-6 days a week to their present capacity of 100 Barrel batches, followed by the overview of the brewing process. While there I got to sample the Festina Peche (beliner-weiss style with peaches), Indian Brown Ale (cross between scotch/american brown ale brewed with brown sugar), 90 min IPA (one of my favorites) and Palo Santo Marron (brown ale that is aged and a Palo Santo wood cask). All the beers were solid (hey I like Dogfish, I may be biased) and easily the most impressive part of the tour (for me) was the (3) 9000 gal wood "barrels" two made of oak and one of Palo Santo wood. More info for the Palo Santo Barrel and other Dogfish Head stuff in the following:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008 ... rentPage=1

Tour is free and I would recommend it to anyone, it is recommended that you either call or set up your tour online. They are also undergoing renovations to add a brewpub to the brewery location and possibly be able to increase capacity after it is complete.

Dogfish Brewings and Eats: Rehoboth Beach, DE

A short walk off the boardwalk on a busy ocean beach (already sounds awful I know). Really cool cross of beach/brewery atmosphere right off the main drag. Service was good and very helpful to all of our questions about the beers and spirits (when they moved the brewery they turned the old area in the brewpub into a distillery). Prices were super reasonable, $5 for beer flight (5 sampler glasses) and $6 for the spirit flight (4 1oz pours). Food was great and mostly in the $8-$16 range. We had the crab cakes, which turn out to be mostly crab when you're that close to the ocean :) and a burger. The interesting part about the beef at the brewpub is that it is all supplied by the farmer(s) that take the brewery's spent grain for feed, oooohhhh full circle.

Beer Flight: Descriptions are all at http://www.dogfish.com
Shelter Pale Ale (their first brew)
Indian Brown
60 min IPA
Raison D'Etre
Lawnmower (dark in color thought it was a mispour, but was very light and clean)

Spirit Flight:
Blue Hen Vodka
Brown Honey Rum -- Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum is a double-distilled, amber rum aged on American oak and Wildflower Honey.
Jin -- Dogfish Jin is a gin distilled with pineapple mint, juniper berry, green peppercorn and rosemary botanicals.
Blue Hen Blood Orange infused vodka
(Vodka was very smooth, as was the infusion, the rum had a definite honey flavor and a little oak, the jin was by far my favorite very complex and tasty.)

Also had a Sah'Tea which is a new brew they had: which is a modern update on a 9th century Finnish proto-beer.
Brewed with rye, we caramelize the wort with white hot river rocks, then ferment it with a German Weizen yeast. In addition to juniper berries foraged directly from the Finnish country-side we added a sort of tea made with black tea, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper.

All and all I had a great experience and highly recommend both places. As an added bonus you can buy beer at the brewery and both beer and spirits at the brewpub and because it's Delaware they are all tax free!!
"People who drink light 'beer' don't like the taste of beer; they just like to pee alot."

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