Sam Calagione didn’t so much open a brewery in 1995 as light a fuse in a Rehoboth Beach pub kitchen, tinkering with beer at Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats back when it was the smallest commercial brewery in America and proudly felt like it. What followed wasn’t a sellout arc but a slow-motion dare: scaling up without sanding down the weird. By the early 2000s, Dogfish Head had leapt from scrappy, stove-top ambition to a 100,000-square-foot fermentation playground in Milton, Delaware, proving you could grow big and still behave like a curious, slightly unhinged mad scientist. Today they’re one of the country’s largest craft brewers, yet few breweries remain so stubbornly allergic to the centerline — forever fermenting ancient ales, culinary oddities, hop experiments, and ideas that sound ridiculous until they suddenly taste inevitable. Off-centered on purpose, still. Craft Beer Crosscut 1.29.17 raises a glass to that beautifully unruly spirit with A Flight of Dogfish Head.
Dogfish Head Biere de Provence
8.3% ABV
Biere De Provence is a saison brewed with lavender, bay leaf, marjoram and chervil as a nod to the aromatic herbs used in Southern French cuisine. Cloudy gold in color, the aroma is floral with both sweet and spiced notes. It features sweet fruits and black pepper, cardamom, and the as-advertised additional ingredients of bay leaves, marjoram, and a subtle touch of lavender. Think bananas and cloves for simplicity.
Dogfish Indian Brown Dark IPA
7.2% ABV, 50 IBUs
Dogfish Head melds three standard styles — American brown ale, Scotch ale and IPA — to arrive at Indian Brown Dark IPA. Brown ale notes dominate the aroma with toasted nuts, baked bread, crumbled chocolate and a touch of coffee. The Scotch ale third has more impact on the flavor — caramel, bitter dark chocolate, smoky peat, very subtle hints of raisins. The IPA third is potent, as it should be — the beer is hopped and dry-hopped with a regimen similar to the one Dogfish uses for its 60 and 90 Minute IPAs. Hops are earthy in the nose, but lend pine and grapefruit — as well as 50 IBUs of bitterness — to the flavor.
Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
6% ABV, 60 IBUs
The 60 minutes of continuous “A Northwest Hop” contributes to sweet aroma of apricot and pear — similar to a Riesling. The beer doesn’t taste as sweet as it smells and instead we get notes pungent grapefruit pith with a slight bitterness.
Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
9% ABV, 90 IBUs
The 90 Minute IPA, which debuted in 2001, is the first beer that Dogfish Head continuously hops, adding hops for 90 minutes during the boil for bitterness, and then dry-hop in the fermentation casks to achieve high aroma and flavor. Despite the massive amounts of hops, a clean, grainy malt character ekes through — maple and golden raisin — balancing some of the bitterness and grassy flavors.
Dogfish Head Olde School Barleywine
15% ABV, 85 IBUs
Olde School Barleywine is a powerful beverage, and that’s an understatement. This bruiser tips the scales at 15 percent ABV, with apricot, plum, apple, orange and sharp, peppery spice on the nose. It has a solid orange-vanilla-fig sweetness up front, somewhat like Cointreau or Grand Marnier, but does not finish too sweet at all, with tobacco and light licorice on the back end.
