Welcome to The Session, a monthly event for beer and brewing bloggers! This is Session #29, for which Beer By BART writers Gail and Steve have chosen the topic, “Will Travel for Beer.”

As if our recent road trip wasn’t enough, we spent a 3-day weekend at the end of June in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to relax our way up and down the boardwalk and partake liberally in the offerings at Dogfish Head’s brewpub, Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats. Over the course of two delicious meals, we got to try several Dogfish rarities.

I started with a pint of 90 Minute IPA, already one of my favorite Imperial IPAs, piped through Randall the Enamel Animal. After a trip through Randall, a lot of the carbonation is lost due to the turbulence, which allows the malt to shine through a bit more, and the extra helping of whole leaf hops adds a pungent flowery, citrusy aroma and flavor that takes a beer already cranked up to 11 well beyond the next level.

Then there was Mel’s pint of Grau Dunkel, a German style Dunkelweizen brewed with wheat malts smoked over the oak chips that Dogfish uses to age their Brown Honey Rum, giving the beer a complex combination of smokey vanilla, honey, and molasses flavors that could not compliment each other better.

Finally, Pale India Ale was a Belgian style pale ale brewed with Fenugreek, Big Elachi, Green Elachi, Kalonji Onion, Garam Masala, and Tamarind Paste. I don’t know what most of those are, either, but the result is nothing short of fascinating, with sweet, Belgian pale malt flavors and neutral hop bitterness mixing with prominent Indian spices, of which I found the two Elachi spices (cardamom) to be the most pronounced.

Each beer was completely unique, and only available at the brewpub. These were alongside various vintage beer offerings and Dogfish Head’s extensive line of delicious spirits. We picked up a bottle of Squall IPA, Sah’tea, a 2006 bottle of Immort Ale, and a bottle of BE, a distilled honey mead. These exclusive items got Mel and I thinking about the business strategy of building a wide-spanning bottle distribution while also maintaining a pub to call home base.

When it comes to raw numbers, I can’t imagine that Brewings & Eats contributes more than 10% of Dogfish Head’s yearly revenue stream. That may even be a bit high, actually. On paper, the pub appears to be nothing more than a nice little value-add for the books.

But man does it ever please the fanboys. Many, many people enjoy Dogfish Head’s beer; that is a given. Most of them will probably never go to the trouble of trekking through Slower Lower Delaware to get to the pub, but for potential hardcore fans, Brewings & Eats provides a sort of Mecca to which one can make a rewarding pilgrimage, drawn by visions of exclusive beers and unique souvenirs.

After a weekend of feasting on the pub’s excellent food and limited edition brews, weighed down with t-shirts and branded glassware and high on beached relaxation, patrons return home transformed into loyal minions spreading the news of just how very immensely great Dogfish Head is. If each visitor convinces even one acquaintance to take a trip to the pub for themselves, the word-of-mouth will explode into a cascade of consumer awareness.

As far as buzzwords go, you can’t get much more apt than “viral”.

Breweries, Brewpubs, Opinion, Pubs, Restaurants, The Session 2 Comments »