Yeah, well, I'm just kind of letting myself go through the holidays. You know, it's that time of year. I don't really have to show myself other than on this podcast to anybody until The Summit in January, January 12th through 14th. Few tickets left at beer.com.
You're going to merge like a phoenix for that one.
Yeah, I'm going to go get my beard trimmed, my hair cut, and also, I got my first hip replacement last week.
Oh my goodness! Who's the jingle? Who's the bell that you're ringing? What is that pole for?
That's for Millis to get me a drink. It goes over real well.
My parents have both had them. I imagine if it's hereditary, I'll be facing that someday. Do you already feel better than before the surgery?
Yeah, no, I'm walking pretty well. I'll be 100% here in a couple weeks. This wasn't bad at all.
Sam, you always remind me we're the same age, even though I look like I could be your father or grandfather.
No, look at me. I got a five-head now. I'm losing my frontage here.
Oh, finally the Italian loses hair. A little bit of hair. Good lord. Well, Sam, it's just the two of us today. Jen had a family something come up, and as you know, at Beer Business Daily, we always put family first. The show must go on.
Yes, the show must go on.
So, thank you, Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head. Thanks for being on Beet Radio. What the hell's been going on over there? This will be a more free-flowing podcast without Jen on it asking questions. There'll be a tremendous lack of organization, professionalism, editing.
It'll meander. Yeah, just letting the listeners know what they're in for. Go grab a drink.
They just dropped this off to me. Is that one of yours?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crack it open.
Who designed that label? A sixth grader? Just kidding. I'm kidding. By the people who did the beer on the movie Repo Man, remember that one?
Oh yeah, yeah. It does look like that. That's our generic label. We're excited to talk about this beer and this collaboration with the Grateful Dead, but we're kind of holding off on revealing the final artwork until after the first of the year because the beer doesn't ship until basically end of January or early Feb. But you're one of the first non-Boston Beer co-workers to try this beer. Harry, let's capture this for posterity.
Immediate reaction: wow, that is good.
Right? I love, I honestly, I love pale ale. And that's a... Folks at home, this is a juicy pale, 5.3% alcohol by volume, for sampling purposes only, not for resale.
I do have one more can. I might resell it later.
Well, just wait till early next year when it's for sale nationally.
Yeah, okay. But no, that's really good. It's a juicy, very juicy IPA.
And what a long, strange trip it's been. We've worked on this recipe for almost a year. We've worked closely with our old buddy David Lemieux, who's the archivist at Historic for the Grateful Dead. He's been along for the whole ride. And so we wanted to do something like, kind of, you know, if you look at today's craft drinker, they're a little less interested in all the different hop varieties and technical information about the yeast than when you and I were coming up in the tri-state ball fields of America, right?
Exactly. Like, I deserve, you know, criticism for, you know, as recently as launching a beer called Hazy O, where I talked on the label about the four different O's that were in it, the oatmeal and the oat milk, and making a relatively complicated proposition at the shelf. And so for this one with the Grateful Dead, we just said, 'fuck it, this is a juicy, juicy pale ale.' But what we don't write on the label is it does have Kernza in it, which is a sustainably oriented grain. It does have granola in it as a shout-out to the parking lots of shows. But we're presenting it as just a juicy pale ale.
Okay, so this is a very new Sam Calagione, folks, than the man I grew up with, because ingredients were always a big part. In fact, I teased you about it relentlessly. I was like, 'you know, does this have some Peruvian goat milk in it?' But you're going back to basics, it looks like. Just a juicy pale, but you had to put in some extra ingredients just for you and your friends.
Yeah, about a Trojan horse. Trojan horse ingredients are Kernza and some oat, some honey oatmeal, granola in there as well. But as you can see, like, our goal is to brew something that would appeal to the widest demographic of sort of Deadheads, not just hop heads. And it's been amazing the reception it's got. We've only sent out those samples to key retailers and distributors, and it's the first time a Dogfish beer forecast ahead of the upcoming year got bumped up mostly because of the excitement for this. We have coast-to-coast programming at Whole Foods. It's going to be in big 192-ounce cans in the Sphere in Vegas when the Dead...
Yeah, I was just going to ask because I know they're playing a longer run at the Sphere. And you know, I've noticed that among like millennials, like in the 30 to 35 range, they're back into the Dead. There's a whole new wave, in other words. There's a whole new generation that are now appreciating the Grateful Dead.
Now, I think it's the youngest their demo... the Dead leadership team was telling us it's the youngest their demo has averaged in decades. Some of that's John Mayer coming into the band. I think some of it's what you and I've seen with like legacy beers, like a Narragansett or when Pabst Blue Ribbon had its moments. It was kind of like, 'it's cool to drink what your grandfather does, but not necessarily what your father does.' And I think that's part of the moment that they're having right now.
And so this is coming out when next year?
Yeah, the beer starts shipping in the beginning of February to be on shelves coast-to-coast by the beginning of March. So we're already putting it into tanks and couldn't be more excited. It's immediately going to be a core beer for us alongside a 60 Minute, 90 Minute. So couldn't be more exciting.
Awesome. Well, good. Yeah, well, I wanted to ask you, you know, you're getting up there in age, and where do you see yourself like five years from now? Are you slowing down any, or how do you feel? What's your position right now, you feel like, in your career?
Okay, let's go way deeper out of the gates. No, we're going deep today, Sam. I would say that I work as many hours and think about work as many hours now as when I started the brewery 30 years ago. And I can also say my one of my great mentors and my co-worker Jim Koch is the same way, and we're almost exactly 20 years difference. He's about 75, you and me about 55. So he's still working his ass off and enjoying it. What I have been doing is like thinking through like what are the sort of foundational tentpoles of growing a brand that can age for decades and improve with time. With decades, I kind of have that in my mind. From my perspective, it's like the three C's. And in the world of brewers, we used to talk about like Cascade, Chinook, Columbus, the 3C hops. But the 3C's of brand sustainability, I would say, are commerce, creativity, and community building. And you got to kind of be firing world-class on all three of those if you're going to sustain a brand for decades the way Dogfish or Sam Adams or you have been able to do. And I would say as I'm getting older and my time feels more precious, is I know I've got to participate in the commerce side obviously of what we do as a public company, but that I think I contribute the most and get the most personally out of working on the community engagement, community building, and the creativity side. So if you ask me where I'm going the next five years, I'm still going to work my ass off, but I want to focus more on the creativity, coming up with recipes, whether they're with Sam Adams co-workers, Dogfish, or events and marketing ideas with Sun Cruiser. You know, Dogfish is still the bulk of my work and probably will be per brand, plus my work on the board. But I'd say focusing more on those two things: community building and creativity.
If you put those buckets in front of you with your company and your co-workers, where are you sitting on your focus?
You know, about a year ago, I was making noise about wanting to retire or do something else, still with a foot in the beer door, maybe doing something else. And then the last year, I've really thought about it, and especially since Jordan's been on paternity leave for the past two months, so I've really had to get back into it and writing. You know, why would I do that? I enjoy this. Why would I want to start over? And so, no, I'm kind of like you. I love this industry. I love the people in it. And it's just such a great... I get to travel to cool places, and I'm like, what am I thinking? What else am I going to do? So yeah, I'm kind of the same way.
I have restructured my company so that, you know, other people are running it, and M's running it, and Jessica's doing all the admin. And so I'm completely on the editorial side, which is where I belong. So that'd be more the creativity and community building and less focused on the commerce.
You and I are just the same. Totally are. I don't like doing budgets. I don't like budgeting.
Is there any credence or validity in the stereotypes of that for you?
I don't think so. I mean, I would use it to my advantage when I was single to attract loose women who seem to abide by it. But I got that.
Are you putting a chew in while you drink that gorgeous grape?
Oh no, you caught me. You know, it enhances the taste.
Keeping it classy. If you want to step outside and vape, just put me on speaker so that you can hear me outside of your sauna.
No, no, no. It's... this is delicious even with the Zen. And so, nicotine is just a powerful drug, Sam. It's hard to get rid of.
But so tell me, like, didn't you guys come out with a tequila, Dogfish Head, this year? How's that done?
Yeah, I'm not drinking that one. I'm drinking right now, I'm having our Vodkamú, passion fruit and citrus Vodkamú. And yeah, I mean, as you know, beyond beer, whether it was before it was called 'beyond beer,' you know, Dogfish is just saying 'off-centered goodness.' And we opened one of the first craft distilleries 22 years ago and have been making cocktails of our own spirits for over two decades. Not many brands can say that. And then pre-merger with Boston Beer, Dog... or, you know, Jim Koch and the team at Boston Beer was all over that movement before it had a name as well, whether it's Twisted Tea or Truly. And now Sun Cruiser's grown strong for us. So we feel really excited about the spirits side of our portfolio for 2025.
Talk about self-inflicted wounds. We, Dogfish, at our scale, with of the six national BBC brands, counting Sun Cruiser as its own brand now, we're by far the smallest budgeted for marketing. And Mariah and I have always loved that because we're very, you know, grassroots, hands-on, and that's still how we thrive and get our message out more than traditional advertising. But the last three years, because of our brand scale, Dogfish gets one major focus month from the whole national BBC organization. It's always been July. And for the last three Julys in a row, we've run out of canned cocktails less than halfway into our focus month. Man, imagine how happy that makes our distributor, retail partners, much less our own sales people.
So yeah, I'm excited to say that as a board at Boston Beer, like a few months ago, we voted and allocated the money so that we're putting in the equipment. We could always make the spirits in Milton, Delaware, but we didn't have the can, the slim can packaging equipment. But we just greenlit that spend. And so as of, you know, February of next year, all Dogfish canned cocktails are going to be made in-house and we'll be in charge of our own destiny and not run out of canned cocktails. So we think... I think they're up like 20-something percent in the Northeast for us now that we've been in stock for a while. And so we think that's going to be a growth driver for us, as we think Sun Cruiser is going to be a huge growth driver for us. We're definitely very, very bullish on the spirits-based side of beyond beer. And then we got Twisted as the number one beyond beer. So we have a lot to be excited about in that space.
I was in New York a couple weeks ago. I was so surprised. I was in a bar, and the only RTD they had was Sun Cruiser.
All right. No High Noon, no...
No, and I thought, 'somebody's doing their job, I guess.' Manhattan Beer.
