After a down year in 2022, Dogfish Head is looking to bounce back in the new year.
Dogfish Head co-founder Sam Calagione shared the company’s early 2023 plans with Brewbound, including the transition of the quarterly Art Series to cans, the launch of a new core offering, the addition of another canned cocktail variety pack, and a new sponsorship deal that plays into the company’s lore.
As consumers continue to drink across categories, Calagione said Dogfish Head is well-positioned to meet the opportunity to return to growth in 2023.
“We feel really well-positioned for this moment where these drinkers, it used to be that they were just not monogamous with brands and now we know they’re just not monogamous with what alcohol sources they’re drinking in their drinks,” Calagione said. “And we love that at Dogfish Head because we’ve been doing that for over 20 years.”
Art Series Goes All Cans
Dogfish Head’s quarterly Art Series will only be available in cans this year. Nordic Spring IPA (6.5% ABV) will kick off the 2023 series.
The idea behind the beer came from Dogfish Head brewmaster Mark Safarik, who suggested revisiting and refreshing a Dogfish Head release from the mid-1990s, Immort Ale, a whisky-beer hybrid made with maple syrup from the Calagione family’s farm in Western Massachusetts, peat-smoked barley, juniper berries and vanilla.
Nordic Spring is brewed with Norwegian kveik yeast, wild juniper berries, orange peels, and danko rye malt. Six-packs began shipping in mid-December. The shift to cans for the Art Series will afford the artists creating the labels a bigger canvas for their work, while also moving the beer into a more popular format, Calagione said.
“It’s cool to have this much more real estate to let the artists bring the liquid to life,” he said. Nordic Spring features artwork by Natalya Balnova that evokes Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Seuss.
The Art Series for the remainder of the year will include beer-cocktail hybrid Mandarin & Mango Crush (April to July), Punkin Ale (August to October), and Crimson Cru Red Ale (November to December), which was brewed with Rodenbach.
Citrus Squall Added to Year-Round Lineup
Citrus Squall golden ale (8% ABV) has been two years in the making, Calagione said. The beer is brewed with two different citrus peels and boasts “a bunch of tequila character,” he added.
Originally earmarked for the Art Series, Citrus Squall’s popularity with distributors and Dogfish’s own salesforce led the company to make it a core offering.
The premise of Citrus Squall was to take Dogfish Head’s two decades of experience making cocktails and nearly 30 years of creating beer-cocktail hybrids and apply that to the modern era of craft brewing in an attempt to win back lapsed craft beer drinkers or win over spirits drinkers. The beer also plays in one of the craft segment’s few growth areas: golden ales.
“That younger drinker, they’re down with canned cocktails. They’re down with full-proof tequilas, which is a growth engine, full-proof vodka, which is a growth engine,” Calagione said. “Let’s see if we can actually use some of our cocktail-making prowess as sort of jujitsu wise to bring them back to authentic craft beer.
“This is a big, bold golden ale. It gets a big percentage of its fermentable sugars, both from blue agave nectar and real grapefruit juice, so when you try it, you taste the grapefruit, you don’t just smell it because it’s not just an additive of a flavoring,” he continued. “And it’s actually fermented with a tequila yeast, so it’s got almost equal DNA of a real cocktail and equal DNA of a real craft beer.”
The first cans and kegs come off the line in late January and ship in early February. All markets should have the beer by early March.
Bodegose, Penn Tux & Catchy Chorus Added to 16 oz. Regional Slate
In 2023, Dogfish Head will continue to build out its regional line of 16 oz. can 4-packs with Record Store Day (April 15) release Catchy Chorus IPA, a wider release of Bodegose, a beer brewed in collaboration with Brooklyn’s Talea Beer Co., in July, and Pennsylvania Tuxedo pale ale, which will return in November after ceasing distribution in 2018. All three will be limited to the Atlantic/New England territories, which stretches from Maine to Virginia.
Catchy Chorus’ recipe is built around the four magic chords (E, B, C# minor and A) with hop and grain varieties that share the same letter, Calagione said. As part of this year’s regional Record Store Day release, Dogfish Head will do a series of events with Brooklyn Bowl, the Williamsburg-based music venue and bowling alley.
Pennsylvania Tuxedo is among the most requested Dogfish Head beers on social media, and the company is answering the call, Calagione said.
To capitalize on the popularity of 19.2 oz. single-serve cans, Dogfish Head will offer the format for all three beers in the Atlantic and New England divisions.
Calagione called single-serves a major growth area for Dogfish Head’s beer portfolio, especially flagship offerings 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs. The latter, he said, is up around 500%, albeit off a small base as this is only the second year that the beer has been in the package format.
“That’s to be generating more of the volume every year and I don’t think we’re alone with that,” he said.
More Canned Cocktail 8-Packs On the Way
Dogfish Head’s line of canned cocktails offer the company “tailwinds” coming into 2023, Calagione said.
Excluding spirit-based vodka seltzers, Dogfish Head ranked as the the No. 7 canned cocktail brand, Calagione said, citing IRI data. Driving growth for top canned cocktails over the last year were larger pack sizes, such as 8- and 12-packs (or larger), of which Dogfish Head previously only had one. In March, that number will jump to four.
Dogfish Head’s Bar Cart variety 8-pack will receive a refresh to focus on vodka-based offerings (each 7% ABV). The company will add a Crush variety 8-pack with flavors such as Grapefruit, & Pomegranate Vodka, Lemon & Lime Gin, Blood Orange and Mango, and Pineapple and Orange Rum Crush.
Strawberry & Honeyberry Vodka Lemonade and Blood Orange & Mango Vodka Crush will each continue as standalone 8-packs.
“That’s going to really help Dogfish get displays nationally on the floor ahead of the busy warmer months for our canned cocktails to a degree that we couldn’t last year because A) we only had one big pack, the Bar Cart, and B) we had some supply chain issues and so that challenge is not going to be there,” Calagione said. “Last year, our service levels of keeping in stock was like 50-50 in stock/out of stock some months. Whereas right now, we’re at 97% in stock. We see the runway that we can grow dramatically canned cocktails way more than the 80% growth we’re experiencing right now and still be in a good place with supply in this coming warm season.”
Dogfish Head to Sponsor Electric Football Championship
As Dogfish Head looks at ways to “reinvigorate the IPA category,” Calagione believes there is a way to reach consumers through some of the lore of his own brand.
“While you and I might know that Dogfish is the only brewery with an invention we made in the Smithsonian that gave us our unique hopping profile, that younger drinker probably doesn’t know that,” he said, referring to the continual hopping device created with a vibrating football game to create 60 Minute IPA.
That device has led Dogfish to become the official beer sponsor and host the Electric Football World Championships February 4 and 5 in Milton, Delaware — the week before the Super Bowl. The championships will coincide with the release of a Dogfish Head-branded Tudor vibrating football game that will be available on the brewery’s website.
“We’re gonna have a lot of fun talking about 60 and 90 and the heritage of how unique this is in a sea of IPAs and tying it back to the OG continual hopping device,” he said. “And then we’ll have another moment of excitement that we’ll share with you ahead of the Super Bowl itself that’ll be a pretty off-centered announcement from Dogfish Head.
“Vinyl is an art form that made an analog come back, and we believe electronic football now that people can be in the same room and don’t want to be staring at the screen anymore is going to be a fun way to drink beer in real time and compete in a fun game.”