Dogfish Head Brewery is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with a pair of product launches designed for a broader appeal: the 30 Minute Light IPA—a low-ABV, 95-calorie brew—and a collab with a storied jam band, the Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale.
The lighter beer is geared toward a more calorie-conscious, wellness-focused demographic. The juicy pale ale, which is nearly a decade in the making, represents the company’s broadest collaboration in its 30-year history, according to founder Sam Calagione. “It’s not just for hardcore beer geek hop heads,” as he puts it.
Dogfish is no stranger to band partnerships, as music has always been a passion point of the brand. But this collab in particular, which marks the Grateful Dead’s 60th year, warranted a multichannel marketing plan. “I think it’s the most robust collaboration in 30 years,” Calagione told Chief Marketer. “Part of that is all the sustained, thoughtful moments that we have on the horizon to not just let it be a launch moment, but embed it in our culture and the Grateful Dead’s culture.” A launch party event with a Dead cover band, a Record Store Day tie-in, guerilla marketing tactics and branded merch—from bocce kits to cornhole bean bags—are all part of the plan.
We spoke with Calagione about the vision behind the launch, the brand’s longstanding connection to music, trends within the alcoholic beverage category and the brands in the marketplace that most inspire him.
Chief Marketer: How did the collaboration with the Grateful Dead first come about?
Sam Calagione, Founder of Dogfish Head Brewery: Dogfish had the dubious distinction of being literally the smallest commercial brewery in America. We opened 30 years ago in this old rickety barn in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. But our Holy Trinity to stand out as a tiny brewery was original beer, original food, original music. So music’s always been one of our central brand focuses and passions. And we’ve had bands as diverse as The Strokes, the hip hop band Deltron 3030, Guided by Voices and Built to Spill play our stage. Along the way, we reached out to artists that we love in the music space to collaborate on actual beer recipes, like with the Flaming Lips and the family of Miles Davis. But I’ve got to say, in our 30-year history, this is the most robust and cathartic collaboration Dogfish has ever done.
CM: How so?
SG: The Grateful Dead’s my favorite band. It’s my son Sammy’s—who’s 25 years old—favorite band. And the brand itself is just such an inspiration to our brewery. We have a saying in our company: Our differences make us stronger. And if you look at the background of the Grateful Dead, it’s kind of a superhero group with complimentary superpowers. Jerry was a bluegrass country player; Bob Weir was the jazz player; “Pigpen” was R&B. They came together with these different backgrounds to create this beautiful, vibrant, unique, approachable form of music.
So they’re a big inspiration to us, and we became really good friends with Phil Lesh from the band who recently passed away. And then David Lamieux, the band’s archivist and historian, shepherded this collaboration to life. It’s probably the biggest new beer launch for Dogfish since we launched 60 Minute IPA, our best-selling beer, 25 years ago, in terms of excitement from the marketplace. Retailers coast to coast, the [Las Vegas] Sphere’s going to have it, every Whole Foods store in America, Wegmans, Publix … We couldn’t be more excited about where this collaboration is going.
CM: Take me through those activations and partnerships in the marketplace.
SG: I think it’s the most robust collaboration in 30 years. Part of that is all the sustained, thoughtful moments that we have on the horizon to not just let it be a launch moment, but embed it in our culture and the Grateful Dead’s culture. We have massively overlapping fan groups … 2025 is the 30th anniversary of Dogfish, the 60th anniversary of the band, and it’s the 10th anniversary of Dogfish being the official beer of Record Store Day. Diageo’s brand Guinness, for instance, has done a great job of owning St. Patrick’s Day. Dogfish is a small, grassroots, music-oriented brand, so we wanted to own this holiday that’s all about celebrating a love of independent music sellers, coast-to-coast.
Another component of this collaboration: myself, David Lamieux, my son Sammy and his best friend … co-curated this album of live tracks from 1969 through 1991 that we will be releasing on Record Store Day. The concept was, let’s pick the ultimate live tracks throughout the Grateful Dead’s career that [you’d be] drinking beer to on your porch while listening to the album. That will come out on Record Store Day, which is April of this year.
CM: Was there any competition for collaborating with the band? Or was it a long time coming?
SG: Well, it’s almost been a decade in the making … We consider this the ultimate expression of the collaboration between our brand and theirs. Nine years ago, we went and visited Phil Lesh and his kids at their live music room outside of Berkeley, called Terrapin Station. We did a batch of beer for that moment called American Beauty, and it leaned into the dancing bear iconography of the Grateful Dead. But far and away, the Grateful Dead’s most recognized icon is the “Steal Your Face” [album] skull.
We did that collaboration for a few years and we kind of moved on to other things. But two years ago, The Dead camp reached out to us and said, Hey, we do a lot of things with our brand, but one of the things we’re getting the most requests for is to bring back a collaboration with Dogfish Head, but to do it around the Steal Your Face [art] and use our most recognized icon asset, which is our shark and shield logo, within theirs, for the 60th anniversary year.
CM: What other marketing moments are helping to build buzz?
SG: There’s going to be all these different drops throughout the year… A special American-made hat that’s relying on the original use of the Steal Your Face skull … We’ll have bocce kits, cornhole beanbags … This album we’ve announced for Record Store Day … And we’re going to make another announcement of another album in the back half of this year.
As you know, to build a brand, you’ve got to sustain new excitement, new messaging around it. So we’re being really conscientious that it’s not just about the launch moment. Because we believe this Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale will become Dogfish Head’s second bestselling beer behind 60 Minute IPA—frankly, this time next year.
CM: When it comes to marketing messages, what works well for the brand? And is that changing at all with this particular launch?
SG: No, what we thought would work well is working well, and again, through the lens of the overlapping ethos of the Grateful Dead universe and Dogfish Head. We’re both grassroots brands. The Grateful Dead are famous for allowing their fans to tape their music at shows, whereas traditionally that’s frowned upon, because record labels freak out. [The band said] no, let’s get the music into the hands of the people and then they’ll become evangelists for our brand and share that message.
Similarly, the brand Dogfish—compared to other craft breweries or big brewery brands—doesn’t use a lot of our resources on traditional advertising, billboards, print ads, et cetera. It’s more about building this organic fan base. And we now have 1.2 million followers across our social networks. That’s for sure our most critical platform to get the word out.
Dead.net is the online epicenter for the Grateful Dead’s audience, so [we’re] synchronizing between Dead.net, Dogfish and social the last two weeks, dosing out the messaging … Revealing the can has been incredibly impactful in terms of the impressions that we’ve gotten and the fans that we’ve reached. And only 35% of those that have engaged with the announcement came from the Dogfish Head social universe. The majority are from The Dead, which is exactly what we wanted. Because the Grateful Dead skews younger for a listening demographic, as counterintuitive as that might seem for a 60-year-old band. But selling out Sphere shows in 2025, with a younger demo—it’s exactly where we want to be.
CM: Who’s the target market for this beer?
SG: This beer that we designed is not just for hardcore beer geek hop heads that want super bitter beer, IPAs, et cetera. We’re not calling this an IPA. We’re calling it a juicy pale ale, because we want it to appeal to the broadest-range demo and age of Deadheads, not just IPA hop heads. The recipe itself is built through that lens of broad appeal and sessionability. It’s only got 30 IBUs. (IBUs are bittering units. It’s how brewers calibrate how hoppy their beer is.) That’s half of what 60 Minute has for hops.
CM: So you designed the flavor of the beer with a broader appeal in mind. Any other ways you’re appealing to younger drinkers?
SG: As beverage makers, we have to be careful in our messaging. We can’t have anyone in our ads that’s less than 25. We can’t be marketing to people that aren’t of legal drinking age. So within all of those boundaries, we’re really thoughtful on how and where we should be showing up. For example, guerilla war-style: We’re going into Fenway Park in Boston on their Grateful Dead night, where you have our can with a big logo on it that we hope will get a lot of social engagement for younger drinkers, who are helping us create content just by showing off the logo at these iconic places, whether it’s Fenway or The Sphere.
We’re doing a really cool launch party at Brooklyn Bowl in Brooklyn in a few weeks with David Lamieux, the archivist, and Pete Shapiro, who owns Brooklyn Bowl, with a bunch of different music rooms. Carrie Colliton, one of the founders of Record Store Day, will be talking about the number of buyers of records between age 20 and 35—it’s at an all-time high. It’s weird. Some of them don’t open the records. They’re like artwork on their wall … But that’s an example of how we know that the marketing we’re doing is going to be reaching that younger audience that we know we need to bring into the fold for this beer to be successful.
That younger consumer—not just drinkers—is doing more stay-at-home time … Our focus with this beer is almost equal between on draft and in cans, because we want this to be a social lubricant that brings people out and brings them together in gathering spaces and watering holes. We designed this super cool tap panel that has the iconic lightning bolt built in … So, getting people out to enjoy each other’s company while they’re enjoying the beer is part of our mission, too, just like the Grateful Dead was primarily a live concert vintage band, not as much a record, sit-in-your-house kind of band.
CM: How about your strategy for growth?
SG: It’s an interesting moment in the alcohol beverage world. Beer overall has had small, single-digit declines for a number of years. It’s not surprising, but last year, wine decelerated dramatically. Even spirits, other than canned cocktails, decelerated. Overall, the alc. bev world is not growing. If I had to say what the biggest headwinds are, with a capital “W” on “winds,” it would be: wellness trends, weed and weight loss drugs. Those are the three Ws that we’re all watching. We believe there’s as much evidence that one or two drinks a day—done responsibly, for certain adults—can be part of a healthy lifestyle. But there’s messaging out there that we think is impacting younger drinkers’ excitement to try new alcoholic beverages.
For us, when you talk about trends, we do think about the lower ABV space (craft beers are usually around 6% alcohol). Our other innovation we just launched a month ago is the 30 Minute IPA. It’s only 4% alcohol, 95 calories and 3.6 carbs. We think that’s perfectly aligned for this wellness, weight-loss moment. And then the Grateful Dead beer is only 5.3% ABV, so a little less than normal.
We do believe there’s a big overlap between the Dead fans and fans of legal marijuana. When I said “weed” is one of the Ws, hardly anyone is just “Cali sober” and only having marijuana. The bigger group are those that responsibly enjoy both opportunities. So we think the beer fits into that space—relatively low in alcohol and can appeal to a marijuana drinker and their non-marijuana drink ingestion occasions.
CM: How are you looking at the next couple of years?
SG: Dogfish as a brand hasn’t grown for the last few years, but we just installed two and a half million dollars-worth of new equipment so we can produce our canned cocktails, which is a really fast growing segment in alc. bev. … Our problem in the last two years was we just ran out in the busy summer season. So now with this new installation of this high-speed canning line for slim cans, we’re confident going into this warmer season, not only with the excitement for the Grateful Dead beer, 30 Minute and our existing lineup … but we’ll finally be able to keep up with demand for canned cocktails. And we’ll be able to grow both Dogfish Head beer and Dogfish canned cocktails in 2025—even though it’s likely the beverage industry’s not going to be growing.
CM: What are some of the marketing trends that you’re keeping an eye on right now?
SG: I mentioned that wellness trend. This is the first generation of legal drinking-aged people from 21 to 31 that are drinking less than generations before them—since Prohibition, I’m pretty sure. So within our own segment, that’s something I’m watching really closely. The other thing we watch very closely is outdoorsy-oriented, call them “lifestyle brands,” like a Patagonia or a Huckberry or a Moncler.
I think of my friend that owns Grain Surfboards up in Maine. They make surfboards out of sustainably-harvested cedarwood. Or Wonder Valley, which does these really beautiful olive oils to drink, but then they use olive oil in skincare. Watching these companies expand outside of their core business in complementary business lanes is something that I, as a marketer, storyteller and outdoorsy person, get a lot of inspiration from—and try to apply the learnings there into our beverage world in a way that hopefully our competitors have not thought about.
CM: As the brand’s founder, you’re clearly involved in much of the marketing strategy. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being so close it?
SG: That’s a great question. Because there’s certainly both—particularly if you ask my coworkers. Because I do go deep on the details of certain aspects of our business. I think the foundational elements of any sustainable brand that can last for decades is really three buckets—the three Cs of commerce, creativity and community building. What’s nice now is I can take off my hat that didn’t fit me well for the commerce or accounting or finance side of our business. Those aren’t my strengths or passion. I’m more of a word person, a storyteller, a brewer and recipe maker, than I am an accountant or a finance person … So I don’t go into that part of our world. I let those leaders do what they do really well.
But on the storytelling side, whether it’s the conception of a recipe or coming up with a beer-infused cake concept—or we’re shooting a sea shanty music video with a bunch of people in historic pirate outfits that we’re going to use to promote an ocean-themed cocktail that we’re releasing … Those are the projects that warm my heart. Our brand was built around this rallying cry of off-centered goodness for off-centered people. So every day I get up and get on my paddle board on my bike for an hour and think about how can I contribute more thoughtful centeredness to the Dogfish brand today in a way that will resonate with the off-centered people who have chosen to follow us on this brand journey.
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