Well, last week I accomplished something that I have been wanting to do for years. I finally made it to Milton, DE to visit Dogfish Head. I have been tentatively planning my pilgrimage out there for about three years now. After reading Sam Calagiones “Brewing Up a Business” it only made me want to see this place even more. So, when my girlfriend mentioned that she wanted to go home for a few days over the summer, and her “home” was a mere 35 minutes from the Brewery, I was instantly intrigued. She said that she’d take me out there in exchange for meeting her family (Which I have needed / wanted to do anyways) so all in all everyone was about to win in this excursion. We set out from Maryland last Tuesday and made the drive through countless farm roads and cornfields and then I finally saw it. The silos in the distance, and it was glorious. I knew we were getting close and I had some choice words for Siri as she tried to navigate me away from the shining Mecca. I pointed the truck towards the silos and soon found a large cutout of the fish.

Said fish.

After parking the truck we went towards the tap room. On the way we found a tree house, so naturally I had to stop and get another picture.

Steam Punk!

Now inside the tap room I saw a glorious sight, a pallet stack of freshly bottled 120 minute IPA. They bottled this on July 15th, and released it the next day on July 16th… Naturally, this was the afternoon of the 16th so, GLORIOUSNESS!

AAAAAAAAAAH!

After seeing this I decided to walk around in amazement for a little bit and stumbled across this original brew system used by Sam when he opened in Rehoboth Beach, DE.

Voila

We then went to the bar and found out that the last tour was at 4pm. I looked at my watch to see 3:30 and had a glimmer of excitement… however, being in Delaware, they are of course on Eastern time, where my watch was still on Texas time. 4:30. Drats,

Well, that just doesn’t make good press so we’re going to have to work around that. So, let me tell you what ended up happening.

I had a plan in motion, A good friend of mine just so happened to go to school with one of the actual brewers at Dogfish. Liz came walking into the tap room about 5:15 with special rubber shoes and safety glasses. My tour was going to happen. Not only did she proceed to give me a behind the scenes tour, but since I am no ordinary joe, and since I do know a thing or two about the brewing process… we skipped over the parts of the tour where you learn about the mash tun, and sparging, and the boil, and we were able to go straight to the cool stuff (The barrel room, Palo Santo vessel, control room, bottling line, the cage where Sam Calagione keeps his own personal stash of beer, etc).

There are several pictures of the tour here. Most of them have captions as well.

Being that the brewery is currently under construction, a vast majority of the public tours miss a lot of the cool stuff right now. Which is really a shame, if you are an off centered beer fanatic, you really have to check out the original Randall and the Sofa King Hoppy dispenser (who is about to be retired). The new construction will allow for DFH to brew 500,000 barrels a year, which is an exponential increase over their current 200,000 bbl year production. This increased production “should” mean that we get more Dogfish beer, more often which again, is a win for everyone.

All in all it was an amazing experience. I was a kid in a candy store for the hour and a half that I was there. My next trip in that direction will be to Rehoboth Beach to visit the Brewpub and enjoy some of their on premise only brews. If you EVER get the chance to make it out the brewery I would HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend going early and enjoying it. When I arrived at the tap room a majority of the beers offered were out for the day. I was still able to sample the 60 Minute (Fresh, tasty, amazing), My Antonia (The only Lager that DFH makes, continuously hopped as well of course), Theobroma (An excellent old world style Ale with ancho chilis.) and last, but certainly not least… the infamous… Palo Santo. A gorgeous brown ale fermented in Paraguayan wood vats (largest wooden vats of their kind since prohibition).

A HUGE thank you to Liz the brewer for an amazing afternoon touring an awesome facility. Also a HUGE thanks to my girlfriend who let me use up a majority of our anniversary traveling to see a brewery and putting up with my giddiness and acting like a child for the rest of the afternoon.