Ahead of Climate Week (September 21-27), Dogfish Head Craft Brewery will release what it is calling “the first traceably sourced beer to address climate change through agriculture.”
Dogfish Head is partnering with agricultural technology company Indigo Agriculture to release Re-Gen-Ale — a 6% ABV farmhouse-style saison — starting Saturday, September 19, at its Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats pub in Rehoboth, Delaware.
Speaking to Brewbound, Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione said the partnership with Indigo Agriculture dates back to November, with the first test batches hitting the brewery’s tanks in January. The initial plan was to release the beer for Earth Day but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the release date until Climate Week, he added.
“Through Indigo’s program we do have 100% certified regeneratively grown wheat, but the work being done to barley is chronologically behind the crop process on regeneratively grown wheat,” Calagione said. “So for the barley component of this Re-Gen-Ale recipe, we used barley sourced as locally as possible from farmers who are using regenerative growing practices, but are still in the process of getting their crop certified by Indigo. So it’s a lot more robust than a simple, ‘Oh we’ll pay for carbon offsets to say our beer is carbon positive.’”
Dogfish Head’s brewing team collaborated with Indigo to develop the recipe for Re-Gen-Ale, using sustainable, traceably sourced ingredients from regional providers. The beer is brewed with Willamette hops from Maine, Zuper Saazer hops from Michigan and Dogfish Head’s own Saison yeast strain. The male comes from Epiphany Malt in North Carolina, and the regeneratively grown wheat from Kansas-based farmer Doug Keesling.
Additionally, Dogfish Head will purchase more than the carbon credits needed to offset the production of the beer.
Dogfish Head’s sustainability efforts go back about a decade to when the company produced D.N.A. (Delaware Native Ale), Calagione said. The goal then was to see “how local” of a beer that Dogfish Head could brew.
“We challenged ourselves: Can we make a beer with every ingredient from Delaware?” he said. “And that was a small batch, and we learned from that process. And then two years ago, the reason that Slightly Mighty [Lo-Cal IPA] has that unique spelling of lo-cal IPA is because a big chunk of the fermentable sugars in Slightly Mighty comes from grains that are grown locally and malted at Proximity Malting Company in Delmar, Delaware.”
Those beers laid the groundwork for Re-Gen-Ale.
“Now we’re asking and challenging our farmers that we have relationships with to also explore committing to regenerative growing practices for their grains,” Calagione said. “It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. We’re making baby steps.”
Re-Gen-Ale will be sold $17 in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans at Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats. The beer is packaged using biodegradable, ocean-friendly beverage carriers made by E6PR. The beer will also be sold on draft.
“It’ll have a soft, sort of pillowy malt character, a nice sort of peppery herbal character from the wheat and hops,” Calagione said, adding that
Dogfish Head Brewing Ambassador Bryan Selders will continue brewing batches of Re-Gen-Ale in the coming months so people visiting the pub can try the beer, Calagione added.
The beer won’t enter wider-scale distribution due to a lack of regeneratively harvested crops to take a product national. Nevertheless, Calagione said Dogfish Head will be announcing a new offering in November in the better-for-you space with a key ingredient that is a regeneratively grown grain.
“The next baby step from Re-Gen-Ale is doing a national release product that has a key ingredient that is a regeneratively grown grain,” he said. “And hopefully someday we can all get to a place where we can distribute nationally regeneratively grown beers.”
Calagione declined to provide further details other than that the beer is “holistically orientated toward the active lifestyle space.”
As Brewbound’s sister publication NOSH reported in mid-July, Indigo Agriculture completed a year-long pilot program from its marketplace, which funneled 2.2 million bushels of sustainably grown rice to Anheueser-Busch. After the pilot project, Indigo Agriculture is looking to partner with additional food and beverage companies to “commoditize” the supply chain.