Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [33]
After having tried Dogfish Head’s Raison d’ Etre, an extraordinary complex ale made with friendly “help,” malt, hops, Belgian yeast, beet sugar and green raisins, I asked Sam what beer he likes to drink and contemplate with. His “default” beer always seems to be his 60-minute India Pale Ale, but he admits, “Whenever everyone is asleep in our household and I can’t sleep, I’ll turn to one or two servings of our (18-plus percent alcohol) Worldwide Stout. This beer is really a symbolic beer for me because we would often ask ourselves, ‘What’s stopping us from brewing the biggest beer in the world?’ When I’m feeling a warm buzz, I feel a great deal of pride and at the same time remember how scary it was in the late 1990s when we were really on the edge as a company and how difficult it was. I remember well how the passion of the people who really cared came through during difficult times to get us to where we are today. Being able to enjoy Worldwide Stout makes it all worthwhile. For me it is a reflection of celebrating the pride and journey of the Dogfish Head Brewery and all the other small breweries who have also gone through a lot of tough times to get to their own points of success.”
Dogfish Head’s beers are big and eccentric, but perhaps their very popular 60-, 90-and 120-minute India Pale Ales reflect a lot of the passion and microbrewing craft that is the foundation of this particular brewery. Sam recalls, “Our first 60-minute IPA was brewed in 2000. I took one of those vibrating football games, you know the ones you used to play with as a kid where the players would move as the playing field vibrated. Well, we set a five-gallon bucket full of hop pellets, made a hole at the bottom and set it on the vibrating playing field. As the game field vibrated, the hops would slowly emerge from the bucket and drift down the field and drop into our five-barrel kettle. So the hops are constantly being added to the kettle during a 60-minute period. We called the first batch Sir Hops-a-lot.”
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65-65-65-6.5 INDIA PALE ALE
An India pale ale with the Dogfish Head difference, this recipe has been reduced down to homebrew-scale procedures and ingredients. Lots of hops are added at five-minute intervals. The recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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Their twelve-plus regularly offered beers join special editions of 15 percent barley wine brewed with dates and figs; Liquor de Malt with red, white and blue corn; Pangea with Australian crystallized ginger, African moscavado sugar and Asian basmati rice; Festina Lente with peaches, aged with oak; and other evolving experiments sure to enliven the palate. They’ve moved from 12-gallon batches to 5-barrel, to 30-barrel, and now to 50-barrel batch sizes in their packaging brewery, established in 2002.
“We’re the antithesis of industrial homogeneity,” Sam says. “Microbrewing/craft brewing/homebrewing is all about education, knowledge and creating a community. It begins at the table in everyone’s home. Events like the Great American Beer Festival are a culmination of craft brewing where we can all ‘break bread’ together. Brewers, distributors, retailers and beer drinkers. Knowledge and education has brought us to this place.”
Sam Calagione with his Randall—draft beer dispensed through a bed of fresh hops
If you have the pleasure of meeting Sam, be prepared to meet him on the run. He doesn’t slow down for anyone. Energetic is a word that does not do justice to Sam’s spirit. Just when you think you “get it” and perhaps have had the opportunity to taste his bewildering array of beers, he’s off on new tangents, a dozen ideas at once, concocting the next generation of ales on the frontier of American brewing on the edge of a continent.
Purposefully Local
Flying Fish Brewing Company
AN EMPHATIC “YOUR book, man!” was the reply I received from Gene Muller, the founder of the Flying Fish Brewing Company, when asked how he ever got hooked up with craft beer. Since 1996 at their microbrewery in Cherry Hill, New Jersey,