Dogfish Head releases two new collaboration beers

Dogfish Head has always prided itself on collaborations, and two of the brewery's new beer releases are with breweries both old and new.

The first new release is BoDeGose, brewed in collaboration with Talea Beer Co. in Brooklyn, N.Y., the first female-owned brewery in New York City. Founded by LeAnn Darland and Tara Hankinson – the name Talea is a portmanteau of Darland and Hankinson’s first names – the brewery opened in 2021 and came to the attention of Dogfish founder Sam Calagione and Rehoboth Beach brewpub brewmaster Bryan Selders when Calagione met team members from Talea in Manhattan. Calagione, who learned his trade home brewing while a student at New York University, said he purchased cherries for his first home-brew beer at a bodega, so it was only natural to revisit them. 

Both Talea and Dogfish released their own versions of the beer, which share a gose base with cherries and pink peppercorns. Where they differ is that Talea also used mango, while Dogfish used yellow guava as an additional fruit. The result is that Talea’s beer is a bit darker in color and has a smooth finish, while Dogfish’s version is lighter, hazier and has a tart taste going down. The beer has an alcohol-by-volume of 5%. 

Darland said the decision to brew a sour-style beer fits in with Talea’s focus on fruited sour.

“We’re trying to appeal to cocktail and wine drinkers as much as craft beer drinkers. That’s a great gateway beer for people who think beer is just all hoppy or 13% stouts,” she said. 

Selders said the ingredients for BoDeGose were sourced from trips the Dogfish team took to actual bodegas in New York City and then tested on sour-based beers. He said a gose is a type of sour beer that originated in Germany as a wheat beer that was wild-fermented with salt and coriander. 

To release the beer, Dogfish held a bodega-themed launch party Oct. 22 in Rehoboth that allowed visitors to purchase fruit, coffee, lottery tickets, hot dogs and, of course, cans of BoDeGose. While this first version of the beer was done on Dogfish’s small-batch system in Rehoboth, Calagione said the intention is to brew on a larger scale at Dogfish’s main brewery in Milton next year. 

After collaborating with a new brewery in Talea, Dogfish also recently released a collaboration beer with the 200-year-old Rodenbach Brewery in Belgium, Crimson Cru, a blended red sour ale. This is the second collaboration between Dogfish and Rodenbach after working on another sour, Vibrant P’Ocean, in 2020.

Calagione said Crimson Cru uses Rodenbach’s Flemish red ale, Grand Cru, as the base beer and blended it with a specially made red ale from Dogfish. A Flemish red ale is a Belgian style, different from the Irish red ale style Americans may be familiar with.

“The biggest difference between Flemish and Irish red ales is the way they are fermented. Irish red ales are fermented with brewer’s yeast, while Flemish reds are fermented using bacteria, like Lactobacillus,” Calagione said. “Because of how they are fermented, Irish red ales tend to be more malt-forward, throwing bready, toffee notes, while Flemish red ales are more sour-tasting in nature.”

He said Dogfish’s contribution helps Crimson Cru sit somewhere between an Irish red and an American red in that it has the malty characteristics of an Irish red but also has a fruity, almost wine-like quality to it using Hallertau Blanc hops and sumac spices.  

For more information on both beers, go to dogfish.com.