As the summer selling season takes hold, Dogfish Head is releasing a trio of offerings in its strongest markets, including one that will stick around year-round.
Co-founder Sam Calagione shared details of Dogfish Head’s solo releases with Brewbound, joined by Talea Beer Co. founders LeAnn Darland and Tara Hankinson to discuss the second year of the trio’s ongoing bodega-inspired collaboration.
Here are a few highlights of their conversation with Brewbound.
Hazy Squall Joins Year-Round Lineup
Following the launch of Citrus Squall, an 8% ABV double golden ale and paloma cocktail hybrid, Dogfish Head is adding Hazy Squall IPA to its year-round lineup.
Hazy Squall (6.5% ABV) will be sold in 12 oz. can 6-packs and on draft, starting regionally in the New England and Mid-Atlantic area. The name pays homage to Dogfish Head’s first unfiltered imperial IPA, Squall, and it’s brewed with a blend of pilsner malt and malted wheat, continuously hopped with Cascade during the boil, and then dry hopped late in fermentation with Citra, Azacca, Mosaic and Galaxy hops.
Calagione described Hazy Squall as “the perfect storm between an old-school West Coast IPA with the inclusion of the Cascade hops and the more new school hazy IPA with unfiltered oats casting a bigger haze and the Citra and Azacca hops.”
With Hazy Squall and Citrus Squall, Calagione acknowledged that Dogfish Head is “consciously excited” about expanding the family with “intensely flavorful, but also inordinately approachable, stronger beers.” A variety pack isn’t in the cards yet, though.
Dogfish-Talea Bo-de-Gose Collab Expands
Year 2 of Dogfish Head and New York-based Talea Beer Co.’s Bo-de-Gose collaboration will see the 5% ABV fruited gose receive wider release.
Each brewery will brew their own version of the beer using a similar recipe, which includes ripe cherries, guava and pink peppercorns, all plucked from Brooklyn’s bodegas. Talea expects its beer to be in the New York market in 16 oz. can 4-packs and on draft in its two taprooms for around eight weeks.
Dogfish Head will take its version of Bo-de-Gose further, distributing the beer throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
“We’re still a pretty small brewery here in New York City, so any opportunity we have to almost ride on the coattails of a brand like Dogfish Head and be distributed more widely is obviously great for our company and our beer,” Darland told Brewbound.
“For us to be able to have a collaboration that’s going across a lot of the East Coast is a really amazing opportunity to introduce customers to not just the Talea brand, but we always see fruited sours as one of the gateways to craft beer,” Hankinson added.
Darland, Hankinson and Calagione each shared stories of homebrewing beers, and leaning on bodegas for ingredients. Creating a beer that will be sold in many of those bodegas throughout New York City creates a great storytelling opportunity, Hankinson said.
“We want to be a staple of people’s fridges the same way Dogfish Head is,” she said. “That means you’re not always going to the best beer boutique or you’re not always sitting down at the high-end cocktail bar to get a draft pour when you want to relax and have a great beer on the weekend. This beer will be getting into those bodegas and that’s going to be really full circle for us.”
Talea, which operates taprooms in the Cobble Hill and Williamsburg neighborhoods of Brooklyn, will be adding two new locations in Manhattan with a target date of this fall, Darland told Brewbound.
Talea will take over a former 1,300 sq. ft. Rag & Bone store space in the West Village at the bottom of a residential building built in the 1920s. The brewery plans to lean into the building’s history – which includes the women’s suffrage movement – to create “a modern-day saloon” with nods to the 19th Century, including a back room inspired by the Irish pub snugs, secluded rooms where women would gather to drink.
The second new location will be a beer garden-inspired taproom at the bottom of the Park Terrace Hotel in Bryant Park. The space is located near New York City’s busiest subway stop at Times Square and 42nd Street, so the hope is to become “a go-to happy hour spot for the business and commuting crowds.”
Asteroid City Lager Launched in Conjunction with Wes Anderson Film
A more perfect union of brewery and filmmaker likely does not exist than the off-centered Dogfish Head and the quirkiness of Wes Anderson. For Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City, Dogfish Head has released the limited-edition Asteroid City Lager (5.3% ABV) in 16 oz. can 4-packs in limited markets.
Calagione and Anderson exchanged design notes through a party on what would become Asteroid City Lager, which Calagione called a career highlight. The beer is “brewed with regeneratively grown pilsner malt, Tuxpeno corn malt and Zuper Saazer hops,” and then finished with “mid-20th century Pennsylvania lager yeast as a nod to the 1950s era” in which the film is set.
Dogfish will launch the beer at its locations on June 13. The beer will also receive limited distribution and will be featured at Alamo Drafthouse locations, which will host screenings attended by Anderson.