Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats [East Coast Road Trip]
OK, finally got most of my pics processed and uploaded so I can start telling you about the trip! We left around 6 AM and hit our first stop right on schedule: Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats. As far as I know, this is Dogfish’s only (official) brewpub, as the Dogfish Head Ale House chain is a franchise, and La Birreria is a collab.
Now, let me preface this post with something that’ll probably piss off some of my beer nerd friends: I’m not a Dogfish Head fan. That does not mean I won’t drink Dogfish Head, and it doesn’t even mean that they don’t have beers I enjoy, because some of them I absolutely go crazy about. My problem is that they really, truly live up to their slogan: Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People. And lot of their beers are just too god damned “off-centered” for me. Ta Henket tastes like it was aged with old gym socks. Noble Rot taste like a glass of white table wine from a red and white table-clothed family-style Italian restaurant for $5 that you never get to see the label of. And there are countless others that just don’t do it for me. I dunno, maybe I’m too traditional with my beer tastes but I want my stout to taste like a stout, unless it tastes like an imperial stout, unless that tastes like a barrel-aged imperial stout. Et cetera. And I’m all for subtle hints of this spice or this extra flavor as long as it compliments the base beer, but you can keep all of that other whack shit to yourselves.
But I digress. We picked DFH because it was good stopping point, we’ve never been, you can pick up their Blue Hen vodka infusions, and like I said there are some of their beers that I genuinely enjoy. Fortunately I have some amazing friends at The Ruck that have allowed me to taste more Dogfish Head beers than the average person, but it was the day before their Weekend of Compelling Ales and Whatnot and I wasn’t hopeful there was going to be much on draft I hadn’t had. Luckily (or maybe not so luckily) there were a handful that neither Elise nor I had tried so we did a sampler to get a taste of each. Sadly, none of them knocked our socks off.
The food was OK. Nothing earth shattering but still good. It was Pizza Day, and seeing “woodgrilled pizza” with some pretty interested toppings sealed the deal for me. Summer sausage (more like pepperoni), house made bacon, and pesto pizza? Yes please. Any place south of Philly is “crab country” to Elise, so naturally crab cakes were for her.
They have a little gift shop in the front where you can pick up most of their bottles and other swag to go. We spend some time bullshitting with guy manning the window about where we were from and about our trip (the boner this guy got about Ommegang was pretty funny). Picked up the peanut butter and chocolate infused versions of their vodka along with some other trinkets.
Overall I enjoyed the stop and will definitely be back again, next time for more than just lunch. It was a really easy drive, and we made it to Rehoboth Beach by 1PM. I can see a weekend or long weekend with friends there in our future.
matthew 'fuj' scher 