Delaware Brewpub Earns Lofty Rep

Even with the increasing popularity of micro-brewed beers during the past 15 years, the volume produced by these artisanal producers gets drowned by the lakes of lager and ale flowing annually from behemoth brewers Coors, Miller and Anheuser-Busch.

Back in 1995 the chasm between macro and micro was greater, and the most miniscule of the little guys was an oddly named brewery fermenting in southern Delaware called Dogfish Head.

Dogfish Head’s founder, Sam Calagione, started with just three kegs and one variety of beer, Shelter Pale Ale, which was available at his brew pub, Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats in Rehoboth Beach.

Fifteen years later, the brewpub remains open and Dogfish Head’s beer production has increased exponentially to include 28 styles.

A profile on Calagione published in Business Week in November 2007 reported the brewery tallied $14.4 million in sales in 2006 and 18.5 million in 2007.

Today, Dogfish Head ranks as the 38th largest microbrewer among the 1,500 in the United States, and its beers are distributed across the country

Calagione’s penchant for recipes featuring unusual ingredients and brewing techniques -- like Dogfish Head’s latest creation, Palo Santo Marron, a brew aged in barrels constructed of a fragrant Paraguayan wood -- attract attention, even outside the traditional microbrew drinking crowd.

Among the good press, is a 9,8000-word feature story in the Nov. 24 edition of the New Yorker about Calagione and his company.

Magazine articles and unorthodox recipes probably will not scare any of the three big breweries, but that is not Calagione’s goal.

“We are trying to explore the outer edges of what beer can be,” he told the New Yorker.