Beer Me

Dogfish Head Bringing a Pop-Up Brewery and Custom-Brewed Beer to Firefly Music Festival

For those about to rock, Sam Calagione salutes you.
For those about to rock, Sam Calagione salutes you. Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The New Yorker

Next week when Jack White, the Flaming Lips, the Black Keys and the dozens of other acts lined up for the first ever Firefly Music Festival touch down in Dover, Delaware, the state’s most famous beer-makers, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, will be there to greet them and their fans with frosty cold brews. Throughout the festival’s three-day run, the Brewery by Dogfish Head, a pop-up pub inside a large, air-conditioned tent will give music fans a respite from all the rockin’-out going on Firefly’s three stages, with a (literally) chill atmosphere and a half-dozen of Dogfish Head’s finest on tap. One of which was brewed specifically for the fest. It’s called Firefly Ale, and it serves a drinkable salute to punk rock. “We’re just as much raging music geeks as we are beer geeks,” Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione told Grub. “Since there’s going to be great hip-hop and sort of punk-esque bands on this ticket, we thought it would be cool to celebrate the punk rock angle with this beer and the ongoing argument about where punk rock was born.”

To do so, Calagione told us he and his brewers decided to make a mashup of English and American pale ales. They started with floor-roasted Marris Otter barley imported from the U.K. and English heritage hops, and added a citrusy, American touch to it with Calypso hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. The British ingredients he said are for the Sex Pistols inventing punk rock in England, and the domestic additions are for the Ramones inventing punk rock here in the U.S. The result, according to Calagione is a low alcohol brew with a caramel-y body, citrusy nose and dry finish. “It’s going to be a great hot weather beer,” he said.

In addition to the Firefly Ale, the Brewery will also pour Dogfish’s regular lineup, with 60 and 90 Minute IPA, Midas Touch and Raison D’etre. Calagione and company brewed 180 kegs of the Firefly Ale, but more could come if the festival returns to Dover International Speedway next year.

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Dogfish Head Bringing a Pop-Up Brewery and Custom-Brewed Beer to Firefly Music