Dogfish Head, Belgian brewer team up and offer new sour

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Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton,  joined forces with nearly two-century old Rodenbach in releasing, Vibrant P’Ocean, a 4.7 percent alcohol content  blended sour ale. Rodenbach has brewery in Belgium.

Vibrant P’Ocean is Rodenbach’s  first-ever collaborative brew.

“As America’s number-one brewer of sour beers, we at Dogfishare absolutely honored to be the first to collaborate and create a beer in partnership with Rodelbach, the world’s most well-respected maker of sour beers,” said Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head. “I’m proud to say that our teams contributed equally on every creative facet of this beer – from the brainstorm to the brew to calibrating the vibrant, red hue of the beer though specific grain and fruit blends. We really took our time and focused on creating a mouth-puckeringly magical drinking experience.”

Vibrant P’Ocean comes with  tart, dry flavors of jammy berries and floral lemon. The  breweries  combined two  base beers – one developed by Rodenbach and the other by Dogfish Head.

Rodenbach’s  portion, a two-year, foeder-aged sour from its  standing oak casks, was brewed in Belgium before making its 3,400-mile  voyage to Milton, Delaware.

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In Milton,  it was blended with Dogfish Head’s portion, a kettle sour brewed with pilsner malt, malted wheat, elderberry, elderflower, sliced lemons and Belgian fleur-de-sel. The beer  will be available nationwide in six pack  cans starting in late January.

The breweries are also exploring a future, limited release beer for the Belgian market. f

“Our relationship with Dogfish Head blossomed over a few good sour beers and Vibrant P’Ocean captures all that we hoped for in this collaboration,” said Rudi Ghequire, master brewer of Rodenbach. “It signifies the vibrancy and mutual respect of our beers and two cultures coming together, inspired by the ocean which connects us. The result is an innovative and refreshing sour beer that captures Dogfish Head’s history of creativity, while staying true to the Rodenbach  brand and its oak-aging process which gives Rodenbach.

Dogfish work with sour beer began nearly 17 years ago, when Calagione first brewed Festina Lente.  The  small-batch, spontaneously-fermented beer was  brewed with more than 400 lbs. of locally-grown peaches.

In 2016, Dogfish Head released SeaQuench Ale, which quickly became the fastest growing beer in the company’s history.In early 2018, the brewery introduced SuperEight, a  Gose.

 Later that year, it unveiled its ‘Wooden … it be nice!’ wild beer program and has since released seven small-batch sour beers within the Mid-Atlantic region.

At the Craft Brewers Conference in 2018, Ghequire and the head of Dogfish Head’s ‘Wooden … it be nice!’ wild beer program, Bill Marchi, sat on the same brewing panel. During the conference, fleeting conversations of a future collaboration ensued.

First, Ghequire and members of Rodenbach   made a trip to Dogfish Head’s brewery  in Delaware to further solidify the breweries’ partnership. Brainstorming continued and then, Calagione and members of Dogfish Head’s team visited  Rodenbach’s  brewery in Roeselare, Belgium, to finalize  details.

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