Can you guess which one is which? It may still technically be summer for another 2 weeks or so, but it is looks a lot like autumn inside the brewery right now. Last week we released Touchdown Brown and earlier this week we released our Autumn Seasonal, Scarecrow Pumpkin Ae. Both of these beers were brewed last year, so they’re not “new” per se, but they are new for this calendar year. And since I haven’t written a blog…
I personally think that my love of California Commons and San Francisco go hand in hand. After finishing college, I went on a road trip with a good friend along the west coast and into the mountains. At the end of the trip, I had decided that I was going to move from Chicago to either Denver or San Francisco. I ended up getting a job offer in Denver, and the rest is history. But if I had received an…
As a Colorado native, I’ve had my fair share of exposure to the craft beer scene, but it wasn’t until about 2007 that I really fell in love with beer. I had started working for a corporate restaurant that had a surprisingly large bottle selection, the majority of which were authentic Belgian beers. I still remember the first Belgian I ever tried, a dark strong by the name of Nostradamus, and turning to my phone after the very first…
Brewers Nathan and Gina celebrating the release of Straight Outta Hopton with Dave at 7:30am on 7/16/15. It’s so cliché but I remember one year ago like it was yesterday. We had barely completed the finishing touches to the tap room when the clock hit noon, and it was time to open the brewery to the public for the first time. To say emotions were running high would be putting it pretty mildly, it was a blend of giddy…
Growing up in the Chicago area, it was always the highlight of the summer to go visit my grandparents at their house in northern Wisconsin. When we were younger, my grandpa would take my brother and I down snowmobile and logging trails and look for wild berries. We’d come back with a couple of small buckets and mostly put those berries in our cereal the next few days. While we would also pick some blueberries, the blackberries and raspberries…
Ahhh, German beer. There’s just something about the thought of it that conjures up so many vivid images. Men in lederhosen and alpine hats, women in Dirndl dresses holding steins half the size of them, a polka band in the background while the smoke from grilled sausages gently wisps through the air. Maybe I’m just thinking about Oktoberfest. Hmmm… In either case, the Germans make some of the finest beer in the land. It is always crisp, clean, expertly…
Several members of our staff, as well as myself, are legitimate Dead Heads. The first album we listened to on our first ever batch was Europe ’72. Our bar manager has the Steal Your Face logo tattoed on his leg. So when the Grateful Dead announced they were going to perform some reunion shows, we knew we had to make a beer to commemorate the occasion. Dogfish Head had already brewed a beer with granola and American hops named…
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was the album that took Dylan from an unknown artist to a megastar, with the Beatles listening to it constantly and drawing inspiration from it. For me personally, it was the album that took me from Dylan “appreciator” to Dylan fan. I loved the simplicity of it, Bob alone with his voice, guitar and harmonica. I loved how you could really dive deep into what he was singing about as the focus was firmly on…
I fretted over what style of beer I would brew for Highway 61 Revisited more than any other beer in this series. One of my reasons for that was that I’d argue Highway 61 is Dylan’s most important album. It was released about five months after his landmark Bringing It All Back Home album, in which he had “gone electric” for the first time on the first side of the album. This move alienated and infuriated members of the…
With Memorial Day weekend behind us, we are now unofficially into summer. Sure, the first “real” day of summer isn’t for almost another month, but we’ve never really been ones to be told what to do. Baseball is in full swing, the weather is slowly but surely warming up, the activity around the lake is growing, cyclists are more numerous, and, to do our part, we’re releasing our annual summer seasonal, the Summer Wit. Summer Wit is our take on…