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or prevent any disease. Hey

2:12

everyone, it's Guy here. So this

2:14

week we're taking a quick break

2:16

so our team can bring you

2:18

lots of new episodes of the

2:20

show. So we're bringing you a

2:22

great one from the vault, the

2:24

story of Dogfish Head Brewery, the

2:26

founders, High School Sweetheart, Sam and

2:28

Mariah Caligoni, came on the show

2:31

back in 2022 and they shared

2:33

dogfish head from this weird little

2:35

brew pub in Delaware into one

2:37

of the... biggest brands in craft

2:39

beer. This year actually marks a

2:41

pretty major milestone for the company.

2:43

It's Dogfish heads 30th year in

2:45

business. And as you'll hear, it's

2:47

been a fun and crazy ride.

2:50

So enjoy the show. One of the

2:52

cool moments was, while I was

2:54

trying to raise the money, Morai

2:56

and I went to this regional.

2:59

festival called pumpkin chunkin. Right? I

3:01

took my home brew pumpkin beer

3:03

there and kind of musled the grannies

3:05

and aunts out of the way that

3:08

had their cakes and pies in the

3:10

competition and and our dogfish had pumpkin

3:12

ale won the the food competition. Wait,

3:15

you hijacked a baking competition

3:17

of old women grannies with your beer

3:19

which is not even a part of

3:22

a baking competition and you won that

3:24

that's amazing but that's not fair. It

3:26

didn't say it wasn't for beer. That's

3:29

true. Don't hate the

3:31

player, hate the game. Welcome

3:33

to How I Built

3:35

This, a show about

3:38

innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists,

3:40

and the stories behind

3:43

the movements they built.

3:45

I'm Guy Ross, and on

3:47

the show today, how Sam and

3:50

Mariah Kelajoni made some

3:52

of the weirdest beers

3:54

in America. and turn

3:56

them into a beloved

3:58

craft beer brand. fishhead

4:01

brewery. Last summer I had one

4:03

of those black and white to

4:05

color moments, you know, like in

4:07

The Wizard of Oz, when the

4:10

black and white film switches to

4:12

that vivid technical color when Dorothy

4:14

gets to Oz? Well, for me,

4:16

it happened in a strawberry patch

4:19

in Northern California. It had been

4:21

a long time since I picked

4:23

strawberries. The first one I plucked

4:26

was a small, shiny, bright red

4:28

berry that I popped right into

4:30

my mouth. And within what felt

4:32

like light speed, I experienced that

4:35

black-and-white-to-collar moment. Because to compare a

4:37

store-bought strawberry to one-you-pick is like

4:39

comparing municipal tap water to freshly

4:42

melted glacier ice. Just not the

4:44

same. And once you eat a

4:46

freshly picked strawberry, it's hard to

4:48

go back to the plastic packs

4:51

you buy at the store. These

4:53

are the kinds of moments that

4:55

sometimes inspire a business idea. And

4:57

for Sam Calijoni, it happened at

5:00

a Mexican restaurant that also specialized

5:02

in beer. This was the early

5:04

1990s, and Sam was in his

5:07

mid-20s. And up to that point,

5:09

beer, at least to him, mostly

5:11

meant Budweiser, Coors, and Miller. Sam

5:13

was a bartender at the restaurant.

5:16

It was called Nacho Mama's Burritos.

5:18

And they happened to serve craft

5:20

beers from Europe. Belgian ails, saisons,

5:22

beer infused with fruit and spices.

5:25

And when Sam tried them, it

5:27

was like Dorothy entering that world

5:29

of technical. To say it changed

5:32

his life, sounds cliched, but... That's

5:34

what happened. Sam became obsessed with

5:36

unusual beer. So obsessed, he learned

5:38

everything he could about how to

5:41

make it. He brewed beer with

5:43

overripe cherries and peaches, even pumpkins.

5:45

And by 1995... Sam and his

5:48

high school girlfriend Mariah decided to

5:50

co-found their own craft beer company.

5:52

They called it Dogfish Head and

5:54

they launched it in the small

5:57

town of Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.

5:59

And it just so happened that

6:01

they caught a wave that would

6:03

turn American Craft Beer into a

6:06

massive phenomenon. Dogfish Head Brewery would

6:08

go on to become one of

6:10

the most popular and acclaimed craft

6:13

beer brands and in 2019... The

6:15

company sold to Boston Beer Company

6:17

in a deal worth around $300

6:19

million. The story of Dogfish Head

6:22

is also the story of two

6:24

people, Sam and Mariah, who had

6:26

a special connection and a truly

6:28

lucky partnership. Not just as a

6:31

married couple, but as two entrepreneurs.

6:33

Their business skills complemented each other

6:35

so well. It was almost like

6:38

they hired each other first and

6:40

then decided to get married after.

6:42

Sam grew up in western Massachusetts,

6:44

Mariah grew up in Delaware. The

6:47

two of them met in the

6:49

late 1980s in high school. They

6:51

both attended Northfield Mount Herman in

6:54

western Massachusetts, a boarding school that

6:56

encouraged all of its students to

6:58

have a job. The kids had

7:00

to work the way through school

7:03

and so the, you know, we'd

7:05

be preparing the meals, people would

7:07

be, you know, doing the farming,

7:09

stoking the fires in the power

7:12

plant. And so, you know, I

7:14

think really kind of that impacted,

7:16

you know, influenced our decisions to

7:19

be entrepreneurs, which is probably why

7:21

that school is still such a

7:23

big part of our lives. Tell

7:25

me how you guys met each

7:28

other. Because you're still, you're still

7:30

together, and this is like 40

7:32

years. later. We've been making out

7:34

with each other since the mid-80s,

7:37

yeah. I might be getting like

7:39

our meeting story mixed up with

7:41

that scene in Ghost or Demi

7:44

Moore and Patrick Swayze or molding

7:46

wet clay together, but I remember

7:48

it being in an art class,

7:50

but I know we also had

7:53

work job together. Yes, and I

7:55

do remember us meeting in the

7:57

dining hall while we worked in

8:00

the kitchen together for our work job.

8:02

And how soon after you met did you

8:04

start dating? Well dating when you're at

8:06

a boarding school is kind of a

8:08

loaded term because there's nowhere to go

8:10

on a date. And you probably were

8:12

not allowed in the in the girls dorms

8:14

and the boys dorms right that was forbidden.

8:17

It was an intricate dance guy.

8:19

We had something called visiting hours

8:21

where you had to essentially be

8:23

a contortionist because the rules was

8:25

door had to be open the

8:27

width of a shoe. You each

8:29

had to have one foot on

8:31

the floor. There had to be

8:33

one light bulb on. So it

8:35

was an awesome matrix of fun

8:38

challenges for young people dating each

8:40

other. All right. So you guys

8:42

are like, you know, high school

8:44

couple, whatever that means really in

8:46

high school. But Sam you were a...

8:48

I'm kind of... understanding this you were kind

8:51

of a troublemaker in high school to the

8:53

point where you and I'll just I'll just

8:55

give this part of the story way you

8:57

were kicked out before you graduated but before

9:00

we get to that point what was going

9:02

on were you like what were you doing

9:04

that got you to that point where

9:06

you were kicked out? Well the technical

9:08

term for when they did finally kick

9:10

me out in March of my senior

9:12

year year was accumulation of offenses which

9:14

meant They didn't have me for one

9:16

big thing. They had me for a

9:18

lot of mid-sized things. So I know

9:20

the offenses included things like breaking into

9:22

the hockey rink with a couple friends

9:24

and playing hockey naked. Just, I mean,

9:26

just pranks. These were just pranks you

9:28

were doing. Yeah, you know, some of

9:30

them. Because they were funny. Well, and just

9:33

wanting to like be, you know, I always

9:35

did want to be like the class clown

9:37

and kind of use my sense of humor

9:39

to kind of bring my friends together. thing

9:41

and you know one of them was actually

9:44

I would wait outside of liquor stores and

9:46

because I was a day student right and

9:48

I would pay somebody that was of

9:50

age extra money to get me a case

9:52

of beer and I'd throw it in my

9:54

hockey bag and then bring it on to

9:57

campus and at a premium cell beer to

9:59

the boarding students. I got busted. So

10:01

it was never really malicious at all.

10:03

And that's what made it so painful

10:05

when I got kicked out is because

10:07

I love that school. I didn't really

10:10

show it in a positive way, but

10:12

in that era I was pretty unwieldy.

10:14

There's a story that I've read about

10:16

when your dad came to pick you

10:18

up and drove you home and he

10:20

was obviously you were disappointed. parents are

10:23

disappointed. What do you remember about that?

10:25

Yeah, so I lived on the third

10:27

floor of this boy's dormitory that for

10:29

whatever reason the administration school allowed all

10:31

the troublemakers to be under one dorm.

10:34

So I was in there with a

10:36

bunch of friends and I had my

10:38

record player on my dad. pulled up

10:40

in his F-150 pickup truck and I

10:42

just opened up the window and just

10:45

threw garbage bags of all my belongings

10:47

down in the bed of the truck

10:49

you know while my roommates played that's

10:51

life by Frank Sinatra I guess in

10:53

homage to my Italian heritage and then

10:56

my dad drove me from Northfield back

10:58

to Greenfield Mass like a couple towns

11:00

away where we lived you could see

11:02

him like you know jaw like clenching

11:04

doesn't know if he should say anything

11:06

I didn't know what to say to

11:09

him and at one stop sign he

11:11

said you know Sami sometimes you're a

11:13

tough kid to love and that was

11:15

a only sentence I got on my

11:17

my way home and it was a

11:20

brutal night you know my mom I

11:22

got home and she had a book

11:24

ready for me that was called when

11:26

bad things happened to good people and

11:28

then literally the next morning We go

11:31

outside and my Labrador retriever that was

11:33

on a run outside the run recoiled

11:35

and he hung himself and died. So

11:37

within 24 hours I kicked out of

11:39

high school. My dog dies. It sounds

11:42

like a country music song come to

11:44

life but it was a true story

11:46

and obviously a very traumatizing time you

11:48

know in my life. Wow. You just

11:50

needed a baseball bat to take out

11:53

the headlights of the truck and then

11:55

you really would have a... country music

11:57

song. Sounds like foot loose. Yeah, wow.

11:59

All right, you're kicked out. And Mariah,

12:01

were you, he was your boyfriend, right?

12:03

What did your parents say? Were they

12:06

like, oh, I don't know, Mariah Sam

12:08

seems like trouble. You were going off

12:10

to Brown University, I should mention, like

12:12

you were studying hard and keeping your

12:14

head down and doing all the things

12:17

you had to do. And meantime, your

12:19

boyfriend's like, I don't know. He's kind

12:21

of going in a different direction. Yep,

12:23

as far as you know guy, I

12:25

was studying every night and on the

12:28

straight and narrow, although after he got

12:30

kicked out was the first time I

12:32

ever got in trouble because I got

12:34

caught sneaking off campus to have a

12:36

visit with Sam, but then I was

12:39

also there the next whole year without

12:41

him because he did end up going

12:43

to college, which is the good news

12:45

of the story. So Sam, you did

12:47

manage to go to college, so you

12:49

got your degree, your high school degree,

12:52

and you went off to College in

12:54

Pennsylvania, Muhlenburg, and Mariah, you went to

12:56

Brown in Rhode Island. And did the

12:58

two of you stay together? Those four

13:00

years? We did. We did. It was

13:03

actually cool. Because our schools were very

13:05

different, but we also knew each other's

13:07

friends very well and enjoyed that different

13:09

experience that we got to have every

13:11

once in a while. Why you weren't

13:14

in college, Sam, at Muhlenburg College? Were

13:16

you a... a beer guy and I

13:18

mean everybody's a beer person in college

13:20

at some point right you know but

13:22

did you think about beer did you

13:25

notice it appreciate it or were you

13:27

like a kind of a typical college

13:29

student just pounding beers more like that

13:31

typical college student. I will say, you

13:33

know, when I left Meelenberg the next

13:35

day, I moved to New York City

13:38

and English major, I wanted to go

13:40

take, you know, courses at Columbia or,

13:42

you know, Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, Winton.

13:44

So I started taking courses in the

13:46

MFA program up there, but to pay

13:49

my rent, I worked at a bar

13:51

across the street from Columbia that was

13:53

called Nacho Mama's Burritos, which is a

13:55

pretty, you know, you know, auspicious nature.

13:57

for what actually was an amazing first-generation

14:00

craft beer bar and you know within

14:02

weeks I had chimney red and Sierra

14:04

Nevada celebration and that's really where I

14:06

had my epiphany beers and started on

14:08

the journey you know. This is like

14:11

in the early 90s when I mean

14:13

Sam Adams is around but it most

14:15

bars serve probably you know. but wiser

14:17

occurs, or coors, mill or light, etc.

14:19

Yeah, it was really kind of the

14:22

opening moments of the craft beer renaissance

14:24

in America. So there were some first-gen

14:26

craft breweries, like you mentioned, Sierra Nevada,

14:28

Inc. Liberty. We started from your neck

14:30

of the woods, and Chameh, Brooklyn Lager,

14:32

Harpoon, I remember. So, yeah, so that

14:35

place specialized in the very finite number

14:37

of, you know, diverse beers you could

14:39

get at that time, and I learned

14:41

that I had not only a pretty

14:43

good palate, a pretty good palate for

14:46

appreciating. them but I had a passion

14:48

for like talking about how they paired

14:50

with food and then and what I

14:52

do remember is being like a voracious

14:54

reader I didn't get like my you

14:57

know library card in New York public

14:59

library and I found books like The

15:01

Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian

15:03

and I just went deep into rabbit

15:05

holes and when you read the story

15:08

of these monks in Belgium, you know,

15:10

brewing with these local fruits and these

15:12

check breweries, finding these saws, hops. I

15:14

was like, holy shit, this is just

15:16

as rich as a world of, you

15:18

know, Fitzgerald short stories or Salinger short

15:21

stories. Yeah, but Sam, a lot of

15:23

people, I was sorry interrupt, a lot

15:25

of young people go and work at

15:27

a restaurant that sells. beer or at

15:29

a specialty store and most of them

15:32

enjoy it and then go off and

15:34

do something else. What happened that you

15:36

were like wow wow I'm really interested

15:38

in this was there somebody there I

15:40

mean because you were just hired to

15:43

pull pints of beer and sell them

15:45

but clearly something clicked in your mind

15:47

where you were like this is interesting

15:49

what was it? Well I think it

15:51

was about like that same like rebellious

15:54

reflection I had in high school of

15:56

like screw the man kind of worldview?

15:58

Like what I think I found was

16:00

okay as I read about the beer

16:02

world I was like wait a second

16:05

there's all these super cool very unique

16:07

very vibrant different beers around the world

16:09

but you can't really find them in

16:11

America and America's dominated by these samey

16:13

you know monolithic generic frankly in my

16:15

view light loggers made by giant companies

16:18

this is this could be a really

16:20

cool thing to rebel against. Did you

16:22

go into that job? thinking that you

16:24

wanted to start a business one day

16:26

because you went to to take writing

16:29

classes but it seems to me that

16:31

maybe actually you really were already thinking

16:33

about what could I do maybe I

16:35

could like what kind of business could

16:37

I do is that is that right

16:40

yeah I think so because you know

16:42

my dad was really entrepreneurial and always

16:44

kind of presented to that he always

16:46

sort of romanticized that not in like

16:48

a corny over the top way but

16:51

just he respected that sort of American

16:53

dream, you know, land of opportunity to

16:55

be an entrepreneur. So that was in

16:57

my back of my mind. But the

16:59

other thing really was the owner of

17:01

Nacho Mama's Joshua Mandel was only like

17:04

four or five years old. And he'd

17:06

left like the start of a career

17:08

in in tech here in Boston, moved

17:10

back to New York City and started

17:12

a burrito takeout joint with no entrepreneurial

17:15

business experience. So I didn't have to

17:17

look that far from me to have

17:19

this inspirational figure. And then he and

17:21

I kind of both got into home

17:23

brewing at the same moment when he

17:26

was my boss. So it always felt

17:28

very natural like baby steps to go

17:30

towards writing a business plan. All right,

17:32

so Sam, I remember this is like

17:34

early 90s and home beer brewing kits

17:37

were like kind of becoming all the

17:39

rage. Maybe they already were, I don't

17:41

remember, but you bought like a home

17:43

kit to brew your own beer in

17:45

your apartment? Yeah, you know, myself and

17:47

Joshua Mandel. track down in the New

17:50

York Yellow Pages. There was one store

17:52

I think in all the five boroughs,

17:54

or at least in Manhattan, called Little

17:56

Shop Hops. Then you could buy these.

17:58

like prefab kits and he walked out

18:01

and went to the upper west side

18:03

where he lived with his kit and

18:05

I started walking towards Chelsea and as

18:07

I was walking to my apartment my

18:09

home brew kit I passed a bodega

18:12

that was having a sale outside on

18:14

like all this moldy or just squishy

18:16

like fruit fly-covered fruit and for some

18:18

reason I was like oh my god

18:20

look at all those cherries look how

18:23

cheap that is what if I take

18:25

this pale ale kit? and squish the

18:27

cherries into it. You know, it's not

18:29

the recipe, but I wonder how that

18:31

would taste. It has fermentable sugars, the

18:34

Belgians brewed with fruit, so that was

18:36

kind of the moment, you know, for

18:38

me, I took that kit home and

18:40

started boiling it in our little tiny

18:42

apartment. So that's interesting because you had

18:44

been working at this restaurant that sold

18:47

Belgian aisles, and as you mentioned, there's

18:49

a long tradition of using fruit. in

18:51

Belgian beers, right? So you were kind

18:53

of inspired by that and thought, hey,

18:55

I wonder if I could do something

18:58

like that with my home beer kit.

19:00

Yeah, and it was kind of like

19:02

a hot mess, like I didn't bother

19:04

to read the instruction manual or anything,

19:06

and I bought all these used giant

19:09

like 32 ounce. glass bottles and the

19:11

other thing is it said you could

19:13

either like sanitize the bottles with the

19:15

solution or just heat them up in

19:17

your oven to sterilize them. So I

19:20

remember I heated them all up in

19:22

my oven while I was getting the

19:24

beer ready to be bottled and I

19:26

took them out with like tongs and

19:28

put them down on the floor to

19:30

cool a half an hour or whatever.

19:33

I came back to pick it up.

19:35

I was like, what the, and they

19:37

wouldn't come off the ground. Gone melted

19:39

the carpet. Not only melted the carpet,

19:41

but it affixed the carpet to the

19:44

carpet, but it affixed the carpet to

19:46

the bottom of the bottles. Wow. So

19:48

I remember getting like an exacto knife

19:50

and ripping these circles out of the

19:52

carpet of our rental apartment. out of

19:55

the apartment. There was this like polka

19:57

dots all over the kitchen. Who paid

19:59

for that? That damage to the landlord.

20:01

you know we put another carpet over

20:03

the circles in the carpet and just

20:06

left. All right so you you kind

20:08

of start this process and you leave

20:10

it in there and you got to

20:12

wait for a couple weeks before you

20:14

try it right? Yeah yeah yeah you

20:16

know there usually is a home brewer

20:19

it's awesome to do lots of bottles

20:21

because every week you're so anxious to

20:23

try it that you open one and

20:25

it's so deflating to hear no noise

20:27

but that moment when a bottle opens

20:30

and you hear that kch of carbonation

20:32

is like game on. All right so

20:34

you finally have this beer ready to

20:36

go and by the way I think

20:38

you get a roommate was your roommate

20:41

mad at you for destroying the apartment

20:43

was your room like dude what did

20:45

you do or did they just laugh?

20:47

They mostly laughed yeah and I do

20:49

remember the first time you know because

20:52

it was funny because I lived randomly

20:54

with a bunch of actors who are

20:56

still making an awesome living as actors.

20:58

Ken Marino was there the first time.

21:00

He was my roommate and he's in

21:03

a show called The Other Two on

21:05

HBO. And Joe Latruglio, the short cop

21:07

on Brooklyn 99, was one of our-

21:09

There were your roommates. Yeah, they were

21:11

all in a show called The State

21:13

on MTV when we were- Oh yeah,

21:16

that was a great show. Exactly. And

21:18

so the most surreal night was the

21:20

Mariah came up from Providence the night

21:22

I served that first home, bro. All

21:24

these guys from the state on MTV

21:27

came over, some of them were my

21:29

roommates, and then Ricky Lake randomly enough,

21:31

the talk show host. I'd done some

21:33

weird episode with her, because I was

21:35

doing a little night work as a

21:38

model or just side work, and they

21:40

had me on the show, like on

21:42

it, they had an episode called, when

21:44

good girls fall for bad boys. And

21:46

you were, what would you do on

21:49

the Ricky Lake show? I played a

21:51

bad boy. And I just remember I

21:53

was, I. to treat it very seriously,

21:55

but she was laughing and I was

21:57

like, hey, you want to come over

21:59

to our house tonight? I made some

22:02

homebrew. I didn't think we'd hear from

22:04

her, but we got a knock on

22:06

our third floor, walk up. That's amazing.

22:08

Amazing, amazing, just side gig that you

22:10

had as a model. But they hired

22:13

him for Ricky Lake because it was

22:15

before the show premiered, so no one

22:17

knew what the show was, so they

22:19

had to hire actors to play the

22:21

talk show guests. Just outed Ricky Lake,

22:24

Mariah. Oh, sorry Ricky. Wow, who knew?

22:26

We just blew the lid off Ricky

22:28

Lake. All right, so Ricky

22:30

Lake, the cast of the state, and

22:33

Mariah and you are all crammed into

22:35

your apartment, about to unveil this home-brood

22:37

cherry English pale ale. With carpet on

22:39

the bottom of the bottles. With carpeting

22:42

as coasters attached to the bottles. And

22:44

was it a big thing did you

22:46

like say, and now I'm going to

22:49

unveil... I mean, was it kind of

22:51

this magical moment that you were introducing

22:53

to everybody? It kind of was because

22:55

I didn't know if the beer was

22:58

good or not and we opened it

23:00

up and everyone was surprised I remember

23:02

that and they were just like wow

23:05

this is actually really good Sam and

23:07

I do remember drinking one of those

23:09

whole 32 thingies myself 32 ounce things

23:12

standing on the coffee table and saying

23:14

this is what I'm gonna do in

23:16

my life guys I'm gonna open a

23:18

little brew that makes beers like this.

23:21

Wow so you've got Everyone likes this

23:23

beer and was it, did it have

23:25

that like a sweetness to it or

23:28

like a sourness to it? I mean,

23:30

these were sweet cherries. Do you remember

23:32

whether there was a sweetness to the

23:34

beer? I remember the cherry being pretty

23:37

pronounced and then the pits from the

23:39

cherry gave it like a nice oaky

23:41

wood sort of toasty character. I wonder

23:44

what Ricky liked out of the beer.

23:46

Do you remember? I remember she liked

23:48

it too. I don't think there was

23:51

a single dissenting voice in that group

23:53

of drinkers. When we

23:56

come back in

23:58

just a moment,

24:00

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24:03

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24:05

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26:46

Hey, welcome back to how I built

26:48

this. I'm Guy Ross. So it's the

26:51

early 1990s, and Sam has just taste

26:53

tested his cherry-infused beer for a group

26:55

of friends. And everyone's kind of surprised

26:57

at how much they like it. So

26:59

when Sam wakes up the next day,

27:02

he's still buzzing. I remember that the

27:04

next morning I didn't have to work

27:06

at Nachamama's total dinner ship. So I

27:08

literally got up and with a hangover,

27:10

walked to the biggest unit of the

27:13

New York City library. started doing Lexis

27:15

and nexus searches about starting to write

27:17

a business plan. So you thought right

27:19

then and there I'm gonna start, I'm

27:21

gonna write a business plan. Before we

27:23

get to the business plan, you had

27:26

not yet understood the science of beer

27:28

at this point. Now of course you

27:30

do, but then you were kind of

27:32

just throwing things into a bucket and

27:34

mixing it and hoping it worked out.

27:37

at that point, right? To some extent,

27:39

but I would at that little shopahops

27:41

I bought the book that I first

27:43

read in the library called The Joy

27:45

of Home brewing and Charlie Papazian wrote

27:48

that book and it's considered sort of

27:50

the Bible and so Charlie did a

27:52

really great job in the Joy of

27:54

Home Brewing of putting into layman turns

27:56

the science of fermentation. So by reading

27:58

that I had some level of confidence

28:01

because his rallying cry throughout the book

28:03

was don't worry relax have a home

28:05

brew which is basically yep there's some

28:07

serious science going on in your kitchen

28:09

right now with these little single cell

28:12

animals called yeast but don't freak out

28:14

you know this has been happening for

28:16

thousands of years trust the process and

28:18

you'll make good beer. So you're learning

28:20

about beer, but at this point you

28:23

know you want to make a business

28:25

out of this. And I guess you

28:27

decide that you're going to start out

28:29

by opening a brew pub, right, like

28:32

a restaurant somewhere. But why go in

28:34

that direction with your business instead of

28:36

just making a brand that would bottle

28:38

beer and sell it to stores or

28:41

something like that? Well, you know, like

28:43

I said, I came up in this

28:45

big Italian family, both sides of my

28:47

family and my mom's famous for her

28:49

shrimp scampi and my grandmother on my

28:51

Yacavalli Kelajoni side for... these crazy chicken

28:53

cutlets. And so I grew up with

28:56

food and wine being like central to

28:58

bringing people together and that was kind

29:00

of the lens that I started doing

29:02

the search. How can I blend my

29:04

love of food with my newfound love

29:06

of brewing? Yeah. You know, and it

29:08

was a fairly unique business plan in

29:10

that era because the whole concept like

29:12

in the first page of the business

29:15

plan I wrote, Dogfish Head will be

29:17

the first commercial marine America committed to

29:19

brewing the majority of our beers outside

29:21

the Rhine Heheitska boat. And the Rhine

29:23

Heitzgeboat is like foreign, is the German

29:25

purity laws, you can only use like

29:27

foreign ingredients, right? Exactly, it basically says,

29:30

why are you used to obsolete, that's

29:32

all you got to choose from. And

29:34

you were saying, I am not going

29:36

to adhere to that. Yeah, you know,

29:38

and I even said we're committed to

29:40

brewing the majority of our beers using...

29:42

unexpected culinary ingredients. Like our first

29:45

beers, for example, out of the

29:47

gates were beers like chickery stout

29:49

made with organic Mexican coffee and

29:51

chickery and licorice root, immort ale

29:54

made with maple syrup from my

29:56

family's farm up in Massachusetts, juniper

29:58

berries and aged. on oak, raison

30:00

d'etre, made with raisins, and beets, sugars.

30:03

So right out of the gates, we

30:05

were brewing these beers that were not

30:07

referencing modern beer styles. Because, right, I

30:09

mean, like Sam Adams, for example, prided

30:12

itself on the Reinheitz-Gebot that it was

30:14

a beer that could be sold in

30:16

Germany, because it did adhere to those

30:19

standards. Like that was. a point of

30:21

pride for a lot of the smaller

30:23

craft brewers. Yeah, and rightfully so. I

30:25

mean, the first folks out of the

30:28

gates, the Jim Cooks and the Ken

30:30

Grossman from Sierra, they're brewing these beautiful,

30:32

fresh, local interpretations of modern... you know

30:35

European beer styles yeah and that was

30:37

amazing but Ryan I mean I knew

30:39

we weren't gonna have a big marketing

30:41

budget even to you know stand out

30:44

in that first round of brewers so

30:46

that's why I was like what can

30:48

we do to really stand out and

30:51

reading about people like Alice Waters and

30:53

James Beard who had very similar message

30:55

which is America has an amazing agricultural

30:57

base let's stop genuflecting towards European food

31:00

traditions, let's create our own American traditions

31:02

with our own ingredients and that was

31:04

sort of the the epiphany moment that

31:07

led me to kind of say I

31:09

want to go in this journey that

31:11

really is about culinary inspiration for beverage

31:13

recipes. The restaurant business is like one

31:16

of the riskiest enterprises you can get

31:18

into. It is like very labor intensive

31:20

and overhead intensive and food spoils like

31:23

it is the riskiest, craziest business to

31:25

go into. Like, didn't anybody say that

31:27

to you about the restaurant business? I

31:29

know they did, because banks wouldn't give

31:32

me any money, and that's what they

31:34

would say. But where I think I

31:36

was lucky is, you know, Marai and

31:39

I worked their asses off in our

31:41

summer jobs, and so when I was

31:43

raising that money, like, it was my

31:45

dad believed in us, Mariah's dad believed

31:48

in us, my orthodontist put in money,

31:50

he believed in us, a guy built

31:52

stone... walls for my summer job on

31:55

golf courses believed in us and his

31:57

wife put in money. So, you know,

31:59

sharing our passion in the business plan

32:01

and the concept with a number of

32:04

people in our lives helped us get

32:06

on our way. And these are friends

32:08

and family, right? Because I think you

32:10

raised about $200,000, right, to do this?

32:13

Yep. Yeah, because $220,000, yeah. And it

32:15

was really, I did it, I structured

32:17

his personal loans out of the gate,

32:20

so it wasn't that initially that, you

32:22

know, they had equating the company. So

32:24

that also helped Mariah and I keep

32:26

control of the company as we were

32:29

getting our feet under us. Yeah. And

32:31

I mean, you clearly have, both of

32:33

you now have amazing beer pallets, right?

32:36

And but, and there are people who

32:38

have natural palates, like you meet like

32:40

wine Soméoliers who are just like blind

32:42

tasters. But, but, but. Then there are

32:45

people who train their palates, but still

32:47

that takes time. How did you know

32:49

at this moment, at this time, that

32:52

what you were making was good. Did

32:54

you have people around you who could

32:56

kind of, I don't know, stress test

32:58

it? Well, I mean, certainly our friends

33:01

getting free beer like that. But that

33:03

is not the stress test I was

33:05

expecting. I'd say one of the cool

33:08

moments was, while I was trying to

33:10

raise the money, Morai and I went

33:12

to this regional. festival called pumpkin chunkin'

33:14

chunkin' where a bunch of farmers and

33:17

you know, homespun engineers create these these

33:19

like rub gold burghiske machines that huck

33:21

pumpkins in a field and a sort

33:24

of side show of that competition is

33:26

the a baking competition. Right. I took

33:28

my home brew pumpkin beer there and

33:30

kind of musseled the grannies and aunts

33:33

out of the way that had their

33:35

cakes and pies in the competition and

33:37

our dogfish had pumpkin ale won the

33:40

food competition. Wait, you hijacked a baking

33:42

competition of old women grannies with your

33:44

beer, which is not even a part

33:46

of a baking competition and you won

33:49

that. That's amazing, but that's not fair.

33:51

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

33:53

It didn't say it wasn't for beer.

33:56

That's true. Yeah, I do remember, there

33:58

was a few judges and they're like,

34:00

it just says it's something that you

34:02

can ingest that's made with pumpkins. That's

34:05

all you need to do to enter

34:07

this. So he's, we got a lot

34:09

of men. And you won. You won.

34:11

You won this comp, this, I mean,

34:14

it wasn't like a massive national, but

34:16

it was, it was a local little,

34:18

it was a local little, it was,

34:21

it was a local little, it was,

34:23

it was, it was a local little,

34:25

it was, it was, it was, it

34:27

was, it was, it was, it was,

34:30

it was, it was, it was, it

34:32

was, it was, it was, it was,

34:34

it was, it was, it was, it

34:37

was, it was, it was, it was,

34:39

it was, it was, it was, it

34:41

And what was in your pumpkin ale?

34:43

That same as Dogfish had pumpkin ale

34:46

today. So it was fresh pumpkin meat,

34:48

fresh crushed allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and then

34:50

instead of fermenting it with regular sugar,

34:53

I ferment it with brown, you know,

34:55

organic brown sugar. We still use brown

34:57

sugar in the pumpkin ale today. So,

34:59

wow. You're writing this business plan. What

35:02

were you thinking? I mean, you were...

35:04

coming out of this a gust, you

35:06

know, Ivy League institution and, you know,

35:09

you were, I had lots of options

35:11

to do many different things. And I

35:13

wonder, did you, did you immediately think,

35:15

yes, this is it, this is a

35:18

great business idea? Or were you thinking,

35:20

you know, maybe, maybe Sam will, like,

35:22

move on, like, maybe this will be

35:25

interesting to him for a couple of

35:27

months and then he'll figure something else

35:29

out. opening the Peru pub, particularly as

35:31

he said, as a restaurant, because I

35:34

had worked in restaurants every summer during

35:36

high school and college, so I was

35:38

familiar with that whole world of waiting

35:41

tables. And so the original plan was,

35:43

yeah, he'll move to Providence and start

35:45

looking for restaurant real estate while I

35:47

was working in local TV news up

35:50

there. Okay, and I guess, I guess

35:52

you guys go ahead with... with that

35:54

plan. But from what I understand, you

35:57

start to get cold feet when you

35:59

find out that there's another brew pub

36:01

about to open in Providence. You guys

36:03

were presumably, I think you were hoping

36:06

to be the first ones there. So

36:08

that point do you do you start

36:10

to look elsewhere like like in another

36:12

city? Yeah yeah so you know Marai

36:15

and I talked it through and we're

36:17

kind of like well let's see what's

36:19

another state close to New England where

36:22

we are right now that has yet

36:24

to have a reopening post-prohibition and it

36:26

happened to be Marai's home state of

36:28

Delaware where we worked in the in

36:31

the summers of our college years. And

36:33

at the same time my dad called

36:35

and he said hey there was a

36:38

group that was trying to open a

36:40

group hubububububub with Beach Delaware Beach Delaware.

36:42

but they're not opening. So we said,

36:44

okay, let's control, delete all the providences

36:47

in this business plan and replace with

36:49

each Delaware. Yeah. And I also knew

36:51

that beautiful coastal Delaware is, you know,

36:54

pretty much two hours from DC Baltimore

36:56

Philly, three and a half from Manhattan.

36:58

So it would actually be like an

37:00

ideal hub to eventually distribute beer to

37:03

major metro markets. So you get down

37:05

to Delaware. And what's available there? And

37:07

this is Rehoboth Beach, Delaware? Yeah, yeah,

37:10

Mariah and I, you know, found a

37:12

building that was just a few blocks

37:14

off the beach in Rehoboth, where it

37:16

was called, like, I don't remember, Mariah,

37:19

do you remember what they used to

37:21

call that part of town? The part

37:23

of town where businesses went to talk.

37:26

We like the sound of that. So

37:28

that's for us. It was just far

37:30

enough from the beach that everyone said,

37:32

well, why do you want to be

37:35

that far off? Which, I mean, it's

37:37

literally laughable now because it's only four

37:39

blocks away. Yeah. All right, so okay,

37:42

you guys find this place and you

37:44

come up with a name for it.

37:46

Dogfish had brewings and eats. And by

37:48

the way, how did you come up

37:51

with that name? So my folks had

37:53

a little summer place on an island

37:55

that was in mid-coast Maine and it

37:58

looked out at a jut of land

38:00

called Dogfish Head. And I liked how

38:02

that name kind of meant a place

38:04

to me, a rustic woodsy place, kind

38:07

of like the rustic woodsy beers. But

38:09

I also like how it just sounded

38:11

like three kind of whimsical words you

38:14

know put together in a creative way

38:16

so that wouldn't it wouldn't wreak of

38:18

geography if we ever distributed our our

38:20

beer coast to coast. Right so you

38:23

didn't Mark Hall like Delaware Brewing Company,

38:25

yeah. Or like the first state brewing

38:27

or something like that. Exactly. Or Delaware.

38:29

Classic, right? You could get that t-shirt

38:32

on the boardwalk, guy. Exactly. All right,

38:34

so you find this location in Rehoboth

38:36

Beach to open up, how many seats

38:39

was it going to have? I feel

38:41

like it was like 120 and then

38:43

plus the deck. So that's a big...

38:45

Decent-sized restaurant. Yeah, it was two stories.

38:48

I mean it was I had a

38:50

lot of space. Yeah, and we rented

38:52

it from a woman wonderful woman who

38:55

her family had had a crab place

38:57

that they ran there for like decades

38:59

and then they started just renting it

39:01

out to tenants and it had this

39:04

reputation of of not being a well-run

39:06

place but literally the day like the

39:08

day I got the wooden sign made

39:11

that said dogfish had brewings and eats

39:13

I'd said hey my I stand across

39:15

the road so you can get a

39:17

full view of me taken off the

39:20

old restaurant sign from the facade of

39:22

the building and putting our sign up

39:24

on the bill And so the first

39:27

surreal moment was I unscrew their side

39:29

and I take it off and there's

39:31

a side of another failed restaurant behind

39:33

that underneath. So this is a really

39:36

good good omen. Like one fail to

39:38

fail and now here you go. It

39:40

gets worse. It gets worse guy. Because

39:43

then I'm like, okay. And so I

39:45

screw the dog fish brewings and eats

39:47

side. I'm rise taking the old school

39:49

analog photos of this whole hot mess.

39:52

And literally some guy walks by it

39:54

goes. Brewings and eats. You know it's

39:56

illegal to open a brewery in Delaware,

39:59

right? And if you remember, Mariah's dad

40:01

said, oh, some other entrepreneurs were going

40:03

to open a brewery in Delaware and

40:05

they couldn't raise their money. Well, that

40:08

person walking by. of course I should

40:10

have done my homework. Let us know

40:12

brewing was not legal because he had

40:15

some connection to the other brewery that

40:17

failed. And so he proceeded to tell

40:19

me, oh yeah yeah, the statutes in

40:21

Delaware law still say it's illegal to

40:24

open a brewery in this state. Wow.

40:26

This is an old law probably goes

40:28

back to prohibition. It seems like it

40:30

was just a technicality, but even to

40:33

like deal with that just sounds like

40:35

a headache with all the things you're

40:37

already dealing with. just the regulatory stuff

40:40

and the filings and finding the employees

40:42

and building out the kitchen and the

40:44

space and then brewing the beer and

40:46

you know. So what did you do?

40:49

So literally that same day that we

40:51

ripped two old restaurant sides off a

40:53

wall, put ours up on the wall.

40:56

I drove up to Dover and literally

40:58

I was like, hey Marry, what do

41:00

I do when I get to Dover?

41:02

And she's like, oh, go left under

41:05

Lockerman, blah, blah, blah. So I found

41:07

the right road and I rolled down

41:09

my windows and I was kind of

41:12

like, all right, which one of these

41:14

is the House of Representatives? This is

41:16

the state capital building. Yeah, I guess

41:18

that's what it would be. And I

41:21

walk through the little security thing and

41:23

I get on the other side, like,

41:25

I mean, They were like, well, son,

41:28

you could have to write a bill.

41:30

And they opened their doors. And I

41:32

think that's something that I want to

41:34

give shouts to the state of Delaware.

41:37

It's a super. business friendly state. What

41:39

do you think of its history from

41:41

DuPont to Gore to agricultural shell companies?

41:44

Yeah. Maybe that too. But they were

41:46

super cool like they're helping me. They're

41:48

like, alright, so write this up, get

41:50

a lawyer who can stand with you

41:53

and massage the language and literally guy

41:55

within a month. We were on the

41:57

floor getting a bill that we wrote.

42:00

brought forward and then Governor Carper who's

42:02

now the Senator, you know, signed that

42:04

bill and it actually turned into this

42:06

just kismic moment because all of a

42:09

sudden our state's biggest newspapers are writing

42:11

24 year old kid, you know, foolishly.

42:13

rents a restaurant to open a brewery,

42:16

it's illegal, and he has to go

42:18

to Dover. To change the law. Yeah,

42:20

so people were kind of rooting for

42:22

us to get this. I'm sure. I

42:25

mean, what you couldn't have bought better

42:27

publicity around that. And then subsequently after

42:29

that, we became really friendly with those

42:31

good folks in Dover through the years.

42:34

All right, so you get this law

42:36

passed, brewing is legal in the state

42:38

of Delaware. Yeah, that was an amazing

42:41

moment and I remember like calling Ryan

42:43

from a pay phone, you know, like,

42:45

let the faucets open, you know, it

42:47

was kind of like one of those

42:50

post-prohibition moments of wow, we made this

42:52

happen. Yeah. June 23rd 1995, you open

42:54

the restaurant, this is now fully open,

42:57

right? How was business that first summer?

42:59

It was good. I mean, people came

43:01

in, people wanted to explore, we had

43:03

a lot of people ordering their standard

43:06

beers, and we'd explain that we didn't

43:08

sell those beers, we made our own

43:10

beers. So every customer was a teaching

43:13

opportunity, I guess. I mean, most people's

43:15

pallets at that time was like, you

43:17

know, your standard coures and Miller Light

43:19

and maybe Sam Adams, which is a

43:22

great beer. but was not as radical

43:24

as what you guys were doing? Were

43:26

there people who were like, nah, not

43:29

for me? Yeah, I mean, especially once

43:31

we open, you know, necessities of mother

43:33

invention and the fact that we couldn't

43:35

afford a full scale, you know, commercial

43:38

brewing system and had to start with

43:40

tiny little pots and pans, you know,

43:42

making 12 gallons of beer in the

43:45

corner of our. our restaurant, it was

43:47

actually a blessing in disguise because I

43:49

would brew two or three batches per

43:51

day and let's say I was brewing

43:54

raison d'etre, Belgian brown ale with raisins

43:56

and beet sugars. In the three brews

43:58

that day I would tweak one variable

44:01

in that recipe three times and that

44:03

was our first like de facto focus

44:05

groups I would ask the customers who

44:07

cared enough to visit this crazy little

44:10

brewery. Hey did you like the batch?

44:12

reasons, less reasons, and we kind of

44:14

developed the recipes in concert with our

44:17

original fans and that's kind of how

44:19

our brand grew. And they actually paid

44:21

us to do that, which was kind

44:23

of helpful. And back then, I would

44:26

hand out like file cards when we'd

44:28

hand people beers and ask them, what

44:30

do you think of these? And I

44:32

wish that we kept them. I remember

44:35

we had one beer on tap called

44:37

High Alpha Wheat that was made with

44:39

lavender buds, and one of the comic

44:42

cards came back and says, this beer

44:44

tastes like tongue kissing Laura Ashley. I

44:46

don't know if that's a good thing

44:48

or a bad thing, but probably fair

44:51

point. What you were doing was that

44:53

it was expensive, right? You were using

44:55

a higher volume of grains and expensive,

44:58

you know, dried fruits and sugars. And

45:00

so you had to sell your beer

45:02

for more money. You know, a pint

45:04

of beer might be like double the

45:07

price of a pint of Budweiser, Miller

45:09

Light. Did you have to educate people

45:11

around that? Yeah, to a degree, but

45:14

that's the education we were doing anyway

45:16

to explain to them. what the different

45:18

beer was in the first place. So

45:20

I think it kind of worked hand

45:23

in hand. You know, I think in

45:25

the bigger context, you know, beer is

45:27

pretty much an affordable thing to splurge

45:30

on. So that worked in our benefit.

45:32

And yes, it was more expensive than,

45:34

you know, the regular beer that you

45:36

would buy down the street, but you

45:39

could only get our beer at our

45:41

place. And I think people appreciated that

45:43

it was going to cost more because

45:46

they knew why. I think, you know,

45:48

they saw it being made. Right. So

45:50

from what I understand in initially, maybe

45:52

in the first at least year, you

45:55

were brewing all of the beer for

45:57

this restaurant in 15 gallon kegs on

45:59

propane burners. That's not a lot of

46:02

beer for a restaurant that has 150

46:04

seats every night. So what just how

46:06

me understand how you were brewing enough

46:08

beer what were you doing? Yeah so

46:11

I had a mattress in the cellar

46:13

of the pub so I would only

46:15

go home to our house maybe three

46:18

or four nights a week and then

46:20

stay in the basement of the cellar

46:22

and we would shut at midnight or

46:24

one and then I'd start brewing you

46:27

know before the day would get hot

46:29

you'd want to start brewing by you

46:31

know eight in the morning or so

46:34

so five or six days a week

46:36

I would triple brew, you know, 12

46:38

gallon batches. It worked fine. I would

46:40

use the hose before people got there

46:43

in the brewery for my showers. And

46:45

Mariah had a real job because we

46:47

need an insurance. What were you doing,

46:49

Mariah? What was your real job? I

46:52

was working in local TV news in

46:54

Salisbury, Maryland. On camera? I prefer that.

46:56

But you were doing that in a

46:59

day, daytime and coming in the restaurant

47:01

night? Yeah, I would come in and

47:03

bus tables or work at the front

47:05

door, do some dishes, whatever needed to

47:08

be done. And Sam, you were doing,

47:10

you were brewing the beer and doing

47:12

payroll and doing the shifts and the

47:15

schedules and stuff like that? Oh, he

47:17

wasn't doing payroll. I don't trust me

47:19

with the math. basically talking about the

47:21

beer and the food and how they

47:24

worked together with the customers that I'd

47:26

be getting ready to get the bands

47:28

on stage. Oh you would do live

47:31

music? Yeah, like the Holy Trinity was

47:33

original beer, original food, original music. We

47:35

also refused to have any cover artists

47:37

which you know 93% of the bands

47:40

that play it back then were Jimmy

47:42

Buffett cover bands. So we were like

47:44

finding all these indie rock bands from

47:47

across the country, you know, so that

47:49

was a big part of kind of

47:51

the brand building as well and then

47:53

like trying to foster relationship. with other

47:56

entrepreneurs knowing that in the winter the

47:58

tourists were going to go away and

48:00

trying to get other sort of entrepreneurs

48:03

to choose us as their preferred watering

48:05

hole. Those were the kinds of work

48:07

I was doing as well as brewing.

48:09

All right so you've got the restaurant

48:12

going. But it's very rare for any

48:14

business, little in a restaurant, to break

48:16

even or become profitable in the first

48:19

year. I'm assuming that you were not

48:21

profitable in your first year. The restaurant

48:23

actually did pretty darn well, like right

48:25

out of the gates, bringing people in.

48:28

But what did become challenging is I

48:30

knew that our recipes were unique nationally.

48:32

by that focus on the culinary, I

48:35

knew that if I could start distributing

48:37

the beers to cities like DC, Baltimore,

48:39

Philly, Manhattan, and I could get the

48:41

Washington Post to write about a beer

48:44

made with raisins or the fully inquired

48:46

or write about a beer made with

48:48

chickery or that would help our brand

48:50

grow disproportionate to our tiny scale down

48:53

in coastal Delaware. Right, because you could

48:55

not do that. with just that Delaware

48:57

market you had to go to those

49:00

huge media markets and consumer markets like

49:02

Philadelphia DC. Yes and that kind of

49:04

drove us to get our bottling line

49:06

going in our building and buy a

49:09

little box truck and get on the

49:11

road and I would drop off two

49:13

pallets at a distributor in New York

49:16

or Philly but then take a bucket

49:18

of beers to art for a magazine

49:20

or interview or food and wine or

49:22

and you know usually people would let

49:25

us in their door for say hey

49:27

we want to throw an impromptu happy

49:29

hour for your editorial staff or your

49:32

writers and that really helped us start

49:34

getting national attention. So what Mariah what

49:36

gave you the confidence to leave your

49:38

job? in television to go full-time because

49:41

I think full-time, 1997, you joined the

49:43

company full-time. So right before I left

49:45

my full-time job to come to Dogfish,

49:48

we opened a separate production brewery to

49:50

brew and package beer that we could

49:52

then distribute to these markets around us.

49:54

I had last job in TV News,

49:57

I was working managing the assignment desk

49:59

for the news department. So I was

50:01

like the receiver of all of the

50:04

press releases and media alerts and you

50:06

know so I naively assumed that that

50:08

meant oh I know how to do

50:10

the opposite of that and put out

50:13

all this information and I'm of course

50:15

I know how to do marketing but

50:17

quickly I realized that I was not

50:20

needed as much to do marketing as

50:22

I was all of these other things

50:24

that we needed to be able to

50:26

do like accounting and HR and TTB

50:29

or tobacco tax bureau excise tax forms

50:31

twice a month. But I learned,

50:33

I learned a lot. And while

50:35

this is happening, we also went

50:37

headfirst into starting a family. So

50:40

it was definitely an intense time

50:42

for us as a couple and

50:44

as entrepreneurs. Yeah, it's remarkable to

50:47

me when I meet people who

50:49

met when they were teenagers or

50:51

kids because that is so rare right

50:53

like your judgment as a as a

50:55

kid or teenager is just so different

50:58

from your judgment and even our judgment

51:00

as adults is you know people marriages

51:02

don't last or whatever it is right

51:04

but I mean part of it is luck

51:06

that just two of you guys happen to be

51:08

compatible and liked each other

51:10

but but I'm just just curious and

51:13

from your perspective because you married very

51:15

well right like you married somebody very

51:17

smart and who was like the brains

51:19

of the operation at dogfish head right

51:22

in Mariah did you see somebody who

51:24

could be like you know not just

51:26

life partner but like a business

51:28

partner yeah so I often use that

51:30

analogy of like a comic book

51:32

universe as an entrepreneurial universe where

51:34

there's all these mutants with complementary

51:37

superpowers that take on the big

51:39

bad guy you know a giant

51:41

corporation or some monolithic industry and

51:43

so you know to use the

51:45

Marvel universe. You know, I'd say

51:47

I was a lot like cyclops

51:49

where I just was like spraying,

51:51

you know, creative energy in a

51:54

million directions out of my brain

51:56

and eyes and sometimes for good

51:58

and sometimes recklessly and destroy. stuff

52:00

and Mariah has definitely always been more

52:02

like the Professor X like she can

52:04

read my mind and could kind of

52:07

see the lay of the whole land

52:09

you know cultivating and nurturing creative ideas

52:11

that I have into a direction that's

52:14

you know positive for for dogfish but

52:16

you know just also for us as

52:18

a family. All right so so at

52:21

this point both of you are working

52:23

at dogfish head. full-time. You're and you're

52:25

starting to take your beer outside of

52:27

Delaware, trying to get some national attention.

52:30

And so how exactly were you doing

52:32

that? Like were you were you marketing

52:34

mostly the small bars or were you

52:37

also trying to get into like some

52:39

some big stores or like some of

52:41

the big restaurant chains? So we knew

52:44

as we were growing making these really

52:46

exotic beers. It's not like the biggest

52:48

chain Applebee's or chain Costco's was going

52:50

to take a chance on a beer

52:53

made with raisins or a beer made

52:55

with apricots. So our goal at first

52:57

was to find these You know, much

53:00

like, and I know you did a

53:02

great story with merge records, and if

53:04

you look at how much the indie

53:06

music movement in America, essentially the same

53:09

era when craft beer was coming up,

53:11

late 70s, early 80s, the whole concept

53:13

of getting a van as a band,

53:16

and you go across the country and

53:18

you find this grassroots networks of other

53:20

people who have been you to venue,

53:23

yeah, other people that give a shit

53:25

in every city about this art movement

53:27

that you're involved in. So really I

53:29

found that grassroots network of hardcore. craft

53:32

beer bars and restaurants that prided themselves

53:34

on exotic lists. And that's where I

53:36

would drive to when I go to

53:39

Pittsburgh or Hartford or wherever, and I

53:41

try to do a beer dinner and

53:43

talk to the local newspaper. And really

53:45

it was like the Sonic youth model

53:48

of growing a brewing company. Yeah. I

53:50

read a story about a. beer event

53:52

that you were at Sam in 97.

53:55

So you're still in your late 20s,

53:57

28 maybe around then. And this was

53:59

an agust crowd of beer makers and

54:02

you stood up to talk about this

54:04

new beer you were making with apricot

54:06

puree. What happened? Yeah, it was at

54:08

the Brickskeller, which was a mecca of

54:11

craft here. Oh, in DC. Yeah, you

54:13

remember that, don't you? Famous bar, the

54:15

Brickskeller. Yeah. Had like the most beers

54:18

available under one roof. Yeah. So I'm

54:20

there. And they were like one of

54:22

the first places to host these brewers'

54:24

dinners. Like we all get our five

54:27

minutes at the microphone. There'd be a

54:29

room of 100 people. And you get

54:31

up there and describe your beer and

54:34

then you'd go back to the brewers'

54:36

table. getting up on the stage and

54:38

being like as a homage to like

54:41

the fruit aromatics of Northwest American hops

54:43

I've decided to infuse the beer while

54:45

it's fermenting with fresh period apricots and

54:47

kind of made my passion plea to

54:50

describe the beer and I sit back

54:52

down and a little older brewer than

54:54

me gets up on the stage and

54:57

quiet the audience with a spoon on

54:59

his pint and he says I believe

55:01

that fruit belongs in your salad not

55:03

in your beer. I was like, okay,

55:06

all right. But at that moment, did

55:08

you feel kind of like upset or

55:10

did you, were you confident that you

55:13

were onto something? Mariah and I were,

55:15

I think, scared because we had. bill

55:17

collectors calling us. And I'd come home

55:20

and we'd both be beat up and

55:22

tired, but I'd be like, hey, I

55:24

dropped off that beer in Pittsburgh. And

55:26

you remember how last time nine people

55:29

showed up for my beer dinner? Guess

55:31

what? Eleven people showed up this time.

55:33

You know, she was supportive and was

55:36

not like, this is crazy. We're not

55:38

making money. Let's just shut this down.

55:40

But there were some challenging years there

55:42

where we thought we were going to

55:45

go bankrupt, like late 90s. Right, Brian.

55:47

Yeah, I got really good at disguising

55:49

my voice when our grain purveyor would

55:52

call and ask for money and I'd

55:54

be like, oh, no, they're not here.

55:56

You know, like, what was it? Was

55:59

it just you were running the business

56:01

inefficiently? or you just weren't selling enough

56:03

beer, or what was going on? Well,

56:05

anytime you want to make more beer,

56:08

you need more capital because it's such

56:10

a capital-intensive process. It's like, you can't

56:12

just make more beer without investing in

56:15

more tanks and more bottling lines and

56:17

more. So we were living hand-to-mouth and

56:19

any money that we got in, we

56:21

were putting right back, whether it was

56:24

into our people, our ingredients, or our

56:26

equipment. And I'd add to that, you

56:28

know, it was all crappy used. We

56:31

had a bottling line that came from

56:33

East Germany that I think made soda

56:35

over there in the 1950s and was

56:38

sent to America as part of a

56:40

Cold War initiative to screw up American

56:42

manufacturing and we literally paid a guy.

56:44

who was very skittish and wore ski

56:47

goggles to just stand behind the bottom

56:49

line and push valve number seven down

56:51

as his job because the machine didn't

56:54

work and literally I think one fifth

56:56

of the beer that came off that

56:58

bottom line. wasn't even a full bottle

57:00

and we couldn't sell it. Not a

57:03

very sustainable business model. And then that

57:05

was really around the time that Mariah's

57:07

dad, Tom Draper, could see that we

57:10

needed some help. He's like, you know

57:12

what, all right, I want to put

57:14

in this amount of money and I

57:17

don't know if it was 100,000 or

57:19

it was some meaningful amount, but I

57:21

do want minority equity stake and we're

57:23

going to form a board of board

57:26

of directors. And we're like, oh, okay,

57:28

okay, let's. One of our first board

57:30

meetings were Tom Draper. I stood up

57:33

and showed him like some magazine article

57:35

about our beer that got national coverage

57:37

and he was quiet for a minute

57:39

and then he just said, Sam, cash

57:42

is king and you have no cash,

57:44

which is true. When we come back

57:46

in just a moment, how Sam and

57:49

Mariah begin to turn things around with

57:51

help from a famous beer journalist, a

57:53

retro children's toy, and King Midas. Stick

57:56

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1:00:04

Life is short. Spend it well.

1:00:06

with Winab. Hey, welcome back to

1:00:08

how I built this. I'm Guy

1:00:10

Ross. So it's the late 1990s

1:00:12

and Dogfish Head has a strong

1:00:15

cult following, but it also has

1:00:17

cash flow problems and it needs

1:00:19

to start growing faster. Fortunately, the

1:00:21

famous beer journalist Michael Jackson, yes,

1:00:23

a different Michael Jackson, starts saying

1:00:25

some really nice things about the

1:00:27

brand. Yeah, and telling people that

1:00:29

we're making fun of us or

1:00:32

laughing at us, he said, hey,

1:00:34

wait a second. Dogfish is a

1:00:36

very traditional brewery. If you look

1:00:38

thousands of years back, every culture

1:00:40

in every region of the world

1:00:42

was using local indigenous ingredients to

1:00:44

make beer. And in the beer

1:00:46

world, that gave us, you know,

1:00:48

we were always thinking beyond beer,

1:00:51

like how can we recontextualize beer

1:00:53

and moments like that were impactful.

1:00:55

I should mention that Michael Jackson

1:00:57

to beers like Robert Parker to

1:00:59

wine. Right, like he's that important.

1:01:01

Yeah, that's great. Meantime, there's, I

1:01:03

think, I think another pretty pivotal

1:01:05

moment was, was around this time,

1:01:08

sort of the millennium, around 2000,

1:01:10

when you launch the 90-minute IPA,

1:01:12

and then eventually the 60-minute IPA.

1:01:14

These, this become signature beers for

1:01:16

you. What, what, first of just,

1:01:18

can you explain, what is the

1:01:20

90-minute IPA? Yeah, sure. So, so,

1:01:22

you know, many centuries-centries-old. English beer

1:01:24

style and basically it was India

1:01:27

pale Al right India pale ale

1:01:29

and it was basically processed, you

1:01:31

know, an elimination the English would

1:01:33

send beer to the troops in

1:01:35

India and just learned through different

1:01:37

shipments if they sent regular mild

1:01:39

or regular pale ale the beer

1:01:41

would be spoiled when it got

1:01:44

there. So they kind of amplified

1:01:46

the alcohol, they added extra hops.

1:01:48

very hoppy more bitter so those

1:01:50

two factors made this more durable

1:01:52

more intense beer style called IPA

1:01:54

so that was already in existence

1:01:56

but what we did is kind

1:01:58

of took our culinary inspiration into

1:02:00

that IPA space so one morning

1:02:03

I think it was a 99

1:02:05

I was heating up water to

1:02:07

brew then a chef show came

1:02:09

on the television above the bar

1:02:11

and they were talking about if

1:02:13

they added little pinches of crack

1:02:15

pepper to a soup the whole

1:02:17

time so one morning I think

1:02:20

it was a 99 I was

1:02:22

heating I was heating up water

1:02:24

to brew and a chef show

1:02:26

came on the television above the

1:02:28

bar and they were talking about

1:02:30

if they added little pinches of

1:02:32

crack pepper to a soup the

1:02:34

whole time the soup was simmering

1:02:36

that the flavor the complexity the

1:02:39

nuances of the pepper would be

1:02:41

woven into that soup you know,

1:02:43

more gracefully than if they added...

1:02:45

Hold on, let's just say, because

1:02:47

I'll do a lot of cooking.

1:02:49

You're saying, if you add grinds

1:02:51

of pepper throughout the simmering process,

1:02:53

it has a different effect than

1:02:56

if you just add it all

1:02:58

at once? Yeah, I distinctly remember

1:03:00

them saying if I took the

1:03:02

same volume of pepper in one

1:03:04

handful and added it, it would

1:03:06

taste all dislocated and bitter, but

1:03:08

by adding little tiny doses, it

1:03:10

can, you know, give more nuance

1:03:12

and complexity. So I'm watching this,

1:03:15

talk about this and I literally...

1:03:17

I just had an epiphany. I

1:03:19

shut off the gas burner on

1:03:21

my brewery and I drove out

1:03:23

to the highway to Salvation Army

1:03:25

Store because I remembered like this

1:03:27

is a place where you used

1:03:29

jeans and flannel shirts and cool

1:03:31

stuff like that. And they had

1:03:34

one of those old vibrating football

1:03:36

games from the 60s or 70s

1:03:38

that the little guys would be

1:03:40

on the field and it had

1:03:42

a vibrating motor under it. And

1:03:44

I bought the football game. I

1:03:46

drove back to the brewery. I

1:03:48

took a five gallon bucket and

1:03:51

I perfect. holes into it with

1:03:53

a with a hand drill and

1:03:55

then I duct tape the bucket

1:03:57

on some two by fours to

1:03:59

the vibrating football game and then

1:04:01

filled the the bucket with pelletized

1:04:03

hops and just put a step

1:04:05

ladder over my boil kettle and

1:04:07

just changing the angle of the

1:04:10

football game I could vibrate the

1:04:12

hops out of the bucket down

1:04:14

the vibrating football game into the

1:04:16

boiling beer with a goal of

1:04:18

could I make you know one

1:04:20

pellet hit the boiling beer for

1:04:22

the whole 90 minutes of the

1:04:24

boil one stream of pellets so

1:04:27

it's just like one giant hop

1:04:29

edition. This sounds like a very

1:04:31

complicated experiment. Yeah but by doing

1:04:33

this little tiny continual hopping method

1:04:35

it made our beers really intensely,

1:04:37

aromaticly, beautifully, hobby without being crushingly

1:04:39

bitter. Like if we added that

1:04:41

same volume of hops all at

1:04:43

once the beers would have an

1:04:46

unpalatable lingering bitterness by that volume.

1:04:48

Because IPAs can be prohibitively, it's

1:04:50

like an obstacle for a lot

1:04:52

of people because there are people

1:04:54

who do not like hobby beer.

1:04:56

A lot of people, especially when

1:04:58

it's bitter. But this was a

1:05:00

way to get people into the

1:05:03

hops door. without the bitterness. Yeah,

1:05:05

exactly. And to start with everyone's

1:05:07

like, you're the one and done

1:05:09

brewing company. No one's gonna drink

1:05:11

more than one of these super

1:05:13

strong, super hoppy beers. But when

1:05:15

people tried it, they would buy

1:05:17

it again. I remember like being

1:05:19

in our in our house and

1:05:22

Mariah like coming outside and being

1:05:24

like, hey, these guys own a

1:05:26

website called Beer Advocate and 90

1:05:28

minutes the best, you know, reviewed

1:05:30

the highest rated beer on their

1:05:32

on their website. They want to

1:05:34

do an interview. simultaneously stunned that

1:05:36

a 90 minute was the best

1:05:39

selling or the highest rated beer

1:05:41

on their website and really surprised

1:05:43

that there were people that had

1:05:45

a website that rated beer that's

1:05:47

a little I knew about the

1:05:49

internet you know back then yeah

1:05:51

there's something about beer especially craft

1:05:53

beer that just like attracts a

1:05:55

certain cult following and we know

1:05:58

we know from this show that

1:06:00

when you create a niche product

1:06:02

that attracts a cult following it

1:06:04

eventually becomes a mass product. Well

1:06:06

like we also started as the

1:06:08

anti-mass product right? Like our whole

1:06:10

craft industry started that way but

1:06:12

we were at the right time

1:06:15

coming up in that industry and

1:06:17

there was a shakeout in the

1:06:19

late 90s that we navigated. And

1:06:21

the shakeout meant that a lot

1:06:23

of small brew pubs closed. Yeah.

1:06:25

Did not survive. I mean, I

1:06:27

think a lot of people got

1:06:29

into it who weren't like all

1:06:31

about the beer. They were more

1:06:34

like, you know, I read about

1:06:36

this micro-bury trend in the Wall

1:06:38

Street Journal and I'm going to

1:06:40

make a lot of money. It's

1:06:42

like podcasts. Yeah, a lot like

1:06:44

podcasts. Yeah. But yeah, so, so,

1:06:46

so, you know, from a branding

1:06:48

perspective, what you did, but I

1:06:51

don't think this was like a

1:06:53

cynical marketing move at all. It

1:06:55

was really just a passion. You

1:06:57

carved out your niche. not just

1:06:59

experimenting with different ingredients and weird

1:07:01

but doing collaborations like one of

1:07:03

the first unusual collaborations with a

1:07:05

professor at Penn to resurrect like

1:07:07

an ancient Egyptian or you know

1:07:10

Middle Eastern brewing method because they

1:07:12

were brewing beer you know three

1:07:14

thousand years ago. Yeah, and that,

1:07:16

as fate would have it, there

1:07:18

was a beer festival at the

1:07:20

University of Pennsylvania. The guest speaker

1:07:22

was Michael Jackson, who we've already

1:07:24

talked about. And Michael Jack's got

1:07:27

a tap on his shoulder by

1:07:29

this guy, Dr. Pat McGovern, who

1:07:31

said, hey, I'm a molecular archaeologist,

1:07:33

and I basically can reverse engineer

1:07:35

what they were drinking, you know,

1:07:37

the night they buried King Midas.

1:07:39

And Michael Jackson, rest in peace,

1:07:41

put us together with Dr. Pat,

1:07:43

and it formed this awesome relationship.

1:07:46

where we've, you know, we've reversed

1:07:48

engineered and kind of these liquid

1:07:50

time capsules from ancient China, ancient

1:07:52

Italy, ancient Turkey, and that's been

1:07:54

a big, big part of our

1:07:56

journey. Wow, I mean, amazing, and.

1:07:58

I wish I had mentioned Michael

1:08:00

Jackson, I think he passed away

1:08:03

in 2007, but I mean, what

1:08:05

an incredible chance because, you know,

1:08:07

I remember when this beer came

1:08:09

out, because it was just a

1:08:11

natural media story. The beer King

1:08:13

Midas rank is now being brewed

1:08:15

by this company in Delaware. Yeah,

1:08:17

and it's funny because it ended

1:08:19

up with Sam on a full

1:08:22

page spread of people magazine wearing

1:08:24

a crown on his head. But

1:08:26

we would have never thought People magazine

1:08:29

would be interested in our beer, but

1:08:31

that's something that afforded us a new

1:08:33

audience. And you know, it could have

1:08:36

been a fly-by-night, sort of, you know,

1:08:38

oh, this is just a little gimmick,

1:08:40

and I'm sure there were some snickers

1:08:42

in the industry, where people probably were

1:08:45

like, ugh, just a gimmick. But it

1:08:47

wasn't, actually, it did start to sell.

1:08:49

People sort of buy it. Yeah. I

1:08:52

think by 2004, I read, Dogfish was

1:08:54

doing like seven million in revenue. $800,000

1:08:56

in earning. So you were, you turned

1:08:59

it around by then. You guys were

1:09:01

definitely doing pretty well at that point.

1:09:03

I will say by that, Eric, I,

1:09:06

one of the things that was fortunate

1:09:08

for us, we're all these really transparent

1:09:10

with our customers and said, you know,

1:09:13

this beer had three times the ingredients

1:09:15

in it as a normal light logger

1:09:17

and we have to charge three times

1:09:19

as much for it. So we did

1:09:22

reap the benefit of that pricing premium

1:09:24

we were able to command and that

1:09:26

did help a lot with cash flow.

1:09:29

So in general we enjoyed at least

1:09:31

a decade of double-digit annual growth and

1:09:33

so that really helped us get our

1:09:36

sort of financial feed under us. So

1:09:38

as you grow there was an article

1:09:40

that came out in 2008 in the

1:09:43

New Yorker which in the New Yorker

1:09:45

right that's a pretty awesome place to

1:09:47

be. That article it talked about how

1:09:49

you by that point you would quadrupled

1:09:52

in size from 2004 so you were

1:09:54

doing like... 40 million revenue, but you

1:09:56

still could only meet four fifths of

1:09:59

demand. Like a fifth of your orders

1:10:01

would go unfilled. I mean, that's great

1:10:03

to have such a high... demand but

1:10:06

it's also a problem right because you

1:10:08

don't want to not fill those orders

1:10:10

what was happening we just didn't have

1:10:13

the capacity to meet demand yeah we

1:10:15

caught our sales team at the time

1:10:17

that the sales prevention team you were

1:10:19

telling the stop selling well we pull

1:10:22

at one point we pulled out of

1:10:24

a number of states we found like

1:10:26

we couldn't supply as many states as

1:10:29

we had opened up so we retracted

1:10:31

a bit we didn't want to get

1:10:33

too far out over our skis. That

1:10:36

growth was great, but we didn't want

1:10:38

to outgrow our people and our processes

1:10:40

all the same time. So we kind

1:10:43

of intentionally slowed things down a little

1:10:45

bit. Yeah. How about your relationship, the

1:10:47

two of you? I mean, now you're

1:10:49

really growing. You've got probably by 2008,

1:10:52

at least 100, maybe 200 employees. You've

1:10:54

got distribution channels. You're working with distributors.

1:10:56

and you're also raising children. Did you

1:10:59

guys ever sort of have any tension

1:11:01

between the two of you over how

1:11:03

to run the business? Or was it

1:11:06

just very clearly demarcated what Mariah did,

1:11:08

what Sam did? Well, I think we

1:11:10

definitely had different focus areas and... That

1:11:13

also meant we had natural time apart,

1:11:15

which was probably a great thing too.

1:11:17

Our desks at the brewery are literally

1:11:20

next to each other, so it's great

1:11:22

when we're there together, but it's also

1:11:24

great when either one of us is

1:11:26

on the road and we get a

1:11:29

little space there. We joked the window

1:11:31

between our two cubicles is actually bulletproof

1:11:33

glass. No, I mean, I did want

1:11:36

to say though, it did put an

1:11:38

interesting dynamic on our family as we're,

1:11:40

as we're raising Sammy, our son, and

1:11:43

Greer, our daughter, because we do get

1:11:45

to travel a lot to do collaborations

1:11:47

with breweries around the world. We would

1:11:50

choose, you know, what trips we could

1:11:52

bring Sammy and Greer on so that

1:11:54

they could see, you know, what we

1:11:56

were doing was not just about making

1:11:59

a living, but we were trying to

1:12:01

build this community. and giving back to

1:12:03

our community. So having our kids be

1:12:06

part of that instead of feeling guilty

1:12:08

about the challenges of quote unquote work-life

1:12:10

balance, I think was something we had

1:12:13

to learn along the way. Yeah, no,

1:12:15

I mean, there isn't a work-life balance

1:12:17

because there's no like demarcation between work

1:12:20

and not work, really. I mean, we

1:12:22

go out to dinner at night where

1:12:24

it's at an account. Like we go

1:12:26

somewhere on the weekend, like pretty much

1:12:29

everywhere sells beer, right. There is no

1:12:31

like, okay, at this moment, we're not

1:12:33

going to talk about work anymore. It's

1:12:36

just, it doesn't happen, it's not possible.

1:12:38

Yeah. I want to ask you about

1:12:40

something that happened in 2010, which sounds

1:12:43

amazing. You were approached by 0.0, an

1:12:45

amazing production company. I know they made

1:12:47

famously Anthony Bordin's shows. They approached you

1:12:50

because they wanted to do a show

1:12:52

with you, which they did. You eventually

1:12:54

did a deal. to make a show

1:12:57

called Brew Master. Sam, you were the

1:12:59

face of the show. It began airing

1:13:01

on Discovery and didn't last for more

1:13:03

than five or six episodes. What happened?

1:13:06

It was a pretty good show. Right.

1:13:08

You want to go for you? No,

1:13:10

you go. You're the face of that

1:13:13

show. Thanks. You're right, 0.0. Beautiful storytellers

1:13:15

and Anthony Bordain, an amazing inspiration. And

1:13:17

so they did an amazing job and

1:13:20

we were really proud of the show

1:13:22

that we we made kind of celebrating

1:13:24

this blossoming global craft brewing movement. And

1:13:27

then the show started airing and Discovery's

1:13:29

offices are actually right down the road

1:13:31

from us in DC and they came

1:13:33

and watched it with us and I'll

1:13:36

be careful here and I won't say

1:13:38

the name of one of the international

1:13:40

brewing conglomer conglomerates decided they were going

1:13:43

to make... custom ads to run during

1:13:45

our show and Mariah are queen of

1:13:47

social media and I said well I

1:13:50

guess we can't stop you from having

1:13:52

them as advertisers but you know when

1:13:54

our fans talk about that we're going

1:13:57

to talk to them about having normal

1:13:59

conversation. about how we feel about that

1:14:01

and how they feel about that. And

1:14:03

sure enough, after that first episode, the

1:14:06

interwebs was a chatter and we said,

1:14:08

yep, that's not an Indy Craft Brewery.

1:14:10

It's trying to look like one. And

1:14:13

then like within two weeks, the executives

1:14:15

at the network are saying, oh, a

1:14:17

major beer brand is pulling their advertising

1:14:20

unless we stop running your show. And

1:14:22

to Anthony Bordain's credit, he jumped on

1:14:24

his own social and let people know.

1:14:27

He started talking about this. Yeah. Yeah.

1:14:29

He was like, Big Beer killed this

1:14:31

show. But kind of, I mean, I'm

1:14:33

not trying to take their side, but

1:14:36

Big Beer Company saw that the craft

1:14:38

beer revolution was well underway. And so

1:14:40

they were making all these, they would

1:14:42

just throw a Brooklyn or some cool

1:14:44

word into a beer, but it was

1:14:47

really made by like Budweiser and Bush

1:14:49

and Coors, right? Yeah, there's a good

1:14:51

amount of that going on. Hey, nothing

1:14:53

wrong with it. They're trying to make

1:14:56

money too. And if the beers. Not bad

1:14:58

and well-branded, okay, more power to them.

1:15:00

And that when I mentioned that we're

1:15:02

living in this great moment where this...

1:15:04

community of sort of misfits found each

1:15:07

other. We actually do have a real

1:15:09

home, which is we have a tree

1:15:11

group called the Brewers Association. And so

1:15:13

as Craft Beer became this movement that

1:15:15

left the margins and came towards the

1:15:17

center, we saw these international breweries making

1:15:20

beers and selling them as if they

1:15:22

came from small local indie breweries. So

1:15:24

our tree group came together and I

1:15:26

was on the board along with Jim

1:15:29

Cook and Ken Grossman and Kim

1:15:31

Jordan. Now you're talking about everyone's

1:15:33

been on. on how I built

1:15:35

this. You've got good taste guy,

1:15:37

you've got good taste. And so

1:15:39

a bunch of us, you know,

1:15:41

recognize that we needed to come

1:15:43

up with a definition of a

1:15:45

true independent American craft brewery. So

1:15:47

essentially it means if you're over

1:15:49

three million barrels or more than

1:15:51

25% owned by a brewery, that's

1:15:53

over three million barrels, you can't

1:15:55

use our trade groups seal that

1:15:57

says you're an indie craft brewery.

1:15:59

Right. sounds like a lot until

1:16:01

you put it in the context

1:16:03

of market share and that means

1:16:05

you know you're less than you

1:16:07

know like a 5% or 4%

1:16:09

or even even less. Hey Sam

1:16:11

you said three million a couple

1:16:13

times but isn't it actually six?

1:16:15

Yeah I think it is. Just

1:16:17

fact checking you. Thank you for

1:16:19

fact checking me honey. But it's

1:16:21

it's very European right like obviously

1:16:24

champagne. You can't, must come from

1:16:26

champagne, Parmam, Parmesan. And so this

1:16:28

is a version of that. It's

1:16:30

like saying, hey, if you want

1:16:32

to call yourself a craft brewery,

1:16:34

but there's no, there's no real

1:16:36

legislation backing that, right? Like, a

1:16:38

big multinational company can brew something

1:16:40

and call it craft beer. Right,

1:16:42

and we're up against these international

1:16:44

conglomerates, so that's why these smaller

1:16:46

businesses really need this definition of

1:16:48

what our businesses are like, and

1:16:50

then really bears, you know, the

1:16:52

beauties in the eye of the

1:16:54

beer holder, and I guess it's

1:16:56

up to the consumer to say,

1:16:58

I give a shit about that

1:17:00

definition or I don't. All right,

1:17:02

you get to, I mean, I

1:17:04

think at a certain point you

1:17:06

are like, within the top 10

1:17:08

craft brewers in the US, craft

1:17:10

brewers in the US. probably by

1:17:12

2018. Is that about right? Sound

1:17:14

about right? It does. And May

1:17:16

9th, 2019, announcement comes out, you're

1:17:18

being acquired, as described as a

1:17:20

merger, with the Boston Beer Company,

1:17:22

makers of Sam Adams, that you

1:17:24

would become part of this bigger

1:17:26

company. Help me understand why this

1:17:28

was a good decision. I mean,

1:17:30

there was going to be money

1:17:32

involved in, but... you were doing

1:17:34

great on your own. Why did

1:17:36

you feel like it was a

1:17:38

better decision to merge with the

1:17:40

biggest force in craft beer? So

1:17:42

I was on the board with

1:17:44

Jim Cook, you know, at the

1:17:46

Bruce Association for over a decade

1:17:48

and I would I see Jim

1:17:50

at his booth at the Great

1:17:52

American Beer Fest, you know, working

1:17:54

his ass off, serving the beer,

1:17:56

or listening to him on a

1:17:58

radio commercial, talking about the Ryan

1:18:00

Heitzkabote and the purity of the

1:18:02

brewing. So I've always admired him

1:18:04

before we were friends, and then

1:18:06

around 10 or 12 years ago.

1:18:08

we did our first collaborative beer

1:18:10

with Sam Adams. And I remember

1:18:12

calling down to Delaware and talking

1:18:14

to Mariah, I was like, oh

1:18:16

my God, now I've met other

1:18:18

people from Sam Adams and they

1:18:20

remind me a lot of our

1:18:22

coworkers, they're fun, they're passionate, they're

1:18:24

creative, they want to win in

1:18:26

the marketplace. And so at some

1:18:29

point in our journey, we just

1:18:31

started looking at our companies and

1:18:33

our values and saw that our

1:18:35

values were very complementary, but also

1:18:37

our portfolios. Boston Beer Company is

1:18:39

Jim and the co-workers built it.

1:18:41

Yes, it had Sam Adams, the

1:18:43

number one craft logger in America,

1:18:45

but it also had angry orchard,

1:18:47

the number one cider in America.

1:18:49

It had tea, it had salsa,

1:18:51

whereas dogfish had hoppy ails, it

1:18:53

had sowers, it had distilled spirits,

1:18:55

our canned cocktails as well, which

1:18:57

is now, you know, the fastest

1:18:59

growing category and the fastest growing

1:19:01

part of dogfish heads business. Yeah.

1:19:03

And the values and sort of

1:19:05

that portfolio. drove Marionize decision to

1:19:07

do the merger. Well, let me

1:19:09

ask you about, because this is

1:19:11

important, a lot of people listening,

1:19:13

right, they have companies, they get

1:19:15

to a point where they have

1:19:17

to decide, but we take this

1:19:19

fork or that fork, and one

1:19:21

fork could be, we stay independent,

1:19:23

like Gary and Kerex and Cliffbar,

1:19:25

they stayed independent, they continued to

1:19:27

grow, but you could also take

1:19:29

that fork and it could be

1:19:31

a bad decision, right? The market

1:19:33

changes, things happen, things happen, it

1:19:35

can be scary, it can be

1:19:37

scary. Yeah. And what we were

1:19:39

also seeing as an independent craft

1:19:41

brewery is that we looked around

1:19:43

and we were one of the

1:19:45

few independent mid-sized craft breweries left.

1:19:47

A lot of the big multinational

1:19:49

breweries had been buying up a

1:19:51

lot of our peers. So we

1:19:53

were like, okay, well, we can

1:19:55

be independent, but we're at this

1:19:57

really... awkward, almost teenage size where

1:19:59

we're not fully national, like really

1:20:01

deep nationally, and we're too big

1:20:03

to be just local, you know,

1:20:05

and we're independent, and all of

1:20:07

our peers are now not independent.

1:20:09

Not all of them, I would

1:20:11

say the majority, maybe 80%. But

1:20:13

it is incredible that this thing

1:20:15

that you really didn't need that

1:20:17

much money to start out with

1:20:19

turned into a deal that one

1:20:21

for $300 million to Boston beer

1:20:23

company. I mean, I'm sure that

1:20:25

had you thought about that in

1:20:27

1995, you would have thought that's

1:20:29

going to be an amazing outcome,

1:20:31

but you couldn't have imagined that

1:20:34

you would build a brand worth

1:20:36

$300 million. That was not part

1:20:38

of the original business plan. And

1:20:40

like, honestly, if we pulled into

1:20:42

our brewery, like I did yesterday

1:20:44

in Milton Delaware, and the big

1:20:46

tanks that hold, you know, 10,000

1:20:48

cases of beer, were just filled

1:20:50

with 60 Minute. 60 Minute IPA

1:20:52

is still our best seller, but

1:20:54

what I'm most proud of is

1:20:56

we come into this brewery that

1:20:58

has some national scale and the

1:21:00

tanks are still filled mostly with

1:21:02

beers that have sea salt and

1:21:04

limes and monk fruit and pumpkin.

1:21:06

We're just brewing them at scale.

1:21:08

So the community that we built,

1:21:10

like from the smallest brewery in

1:21:12

the country in Delaware, that's the

1:21:14

most rewarding part of it. All

1:21:16

right, there was pushback. Okay, anybody

1:21:18

who's seen Portlandia knows what that

1:21:20

means, right? Anytime the band goes

1:21:22

from playing the indie club to

1:21:24

the stadium, their sellouts. What? You're

1:21:26

collaborating with Elton John and Coldplay?

1:21:28

How could you do that? You're

1:21:30

not cool anymore? Especially because, you

1:21:32

know, you guys were a, you

1:21:34

know, you got this punk rock

1:21:36

aesthetic. You have a brand called

1:21:38

pumpkin ale. It's a punk, pumpkins

1:21:40

on the thing, and there's an

1:21:42

aesthetic. you know, kind of fighting

1:21:44

against the man, the big guys,

1:21:46

and now you're part of a

1:21:48

big company and there were people

1:21:50

were like, you guys hold out.

1:21:52

Did you care when you heard

1:21:54

that? Did that sting? Or were

1:21:56

you like, no, those people still

1:21:58

understand? Oh, of course we cared.

1:22:00

But we also expected it. I

1:22:02

mean, we hoped that over time,

1:22:04

they would see that the way

1:22:06

we're operating, the partners that we're

1:22:08

choosing, do still fit into the

1:22:10

dogfish that they know and loved.

1:22:12

And for those who that merger

1:22:14

was a problem with, we had

1:22:16

to earn it back. And I

1:22:18

hope that we've done that we've

1:22:20

done that. But the drinkers have

1:22:22

to say. And thankfully now in

1:22:24

the world of social media a

1:22:26

lot of that sentiment is quantifiable.

1:22:28

So as we went into the

1:22:30

merger, we knew of course the

1:22:32

smaller the entities that merges is

1:22:34

always going to... take you know

1:22:36

more of the arrows for the

1:22:38

bigger and so we knew monitoring

1:22:41

our social channels that the sentiment

1:22:43

would be more negative for us

1:22:45

but it was up to us

1:22:47

to continue that real dialogue with

1:22:49

our fans to say no you

1:22:51

know we're still doing what we're

1:22:53

doing in Delaware we're actually adding

1:22:55

jobs not taking jobs away investing

1:22:57

in the community and had those

1:22:59

conversations and soon enough we could

1:23:01

see that sort of uptick in

1:23:03

positive sentiment back into our world

1:23:05

so it takes time and it

1:23:07

kind of You have to put

1:23:09

your money where your mouth is

1:23:11

and never really let the tail

1:23:13

of inspiration be wagged, you know,

1:23:15

by the dog of money. That's

1:23:17

how you say it. So, all

1:23:19

right, now you are working as

1:23:21

part of this bigger company. And

1:23:23

I'm going to make you uncomfortable

1:23:25

here. This is the uncomfortable part

1:23:27

of the show. There are a

1:23:29

few others, but you both, I

1:23:31

mean, this made you very rich.

1:23:33

You have a lot of money.

1:23:35

Does it mean anything practically to

1:23:37

your life? I would say no,

1:23:39

and I mean, you know, pre-merger

1:23:41

thinks to the hard work that

1:23:43

we've put in and our coworkers

1:23:45

have put in and a fair

1:23:47

amount of luck. We are already,

1:23:49

we made a good living. So

1:23:51

nothing really about the merger moment

1:23:53

other than the scale of the

1:23:55

dollars has changed. how we live

1:23:57

our lives and we know how

1:23:59

lucky we are to be able

1:24:01

to say that, but we also

1:24:03

know that we love to get

1:24:05

up and do the work we've

1:24:07

done for 27 years today just

1:24:09

as much as we did when

1:24:11

we were fighting to be one

1:24:13

of the smallest breweries and not

1:24:15

just the smallest brewery in the

1:24:17

country. All right, so Sam, you

1:24:19

answered my luck or skill question.

1:24:21

Thank you for preempting it. I

1:24:23

appreciate it. Can you tell we're

1:24:25

avid listeners? Maria, what do you

1:24:27

think? I mean, I have my

1:24:29

take on your story because, I

1:24:31

mean, the fact that you met

1:24:33

in the cafeteria when you're 15

1:24:35

or something, you know, and that

1:24:37

you're still together, takes hard work

1:24:39

too, but I think there's an

1:24:41

element of luck there. I don't

1:24:43

know, what do you think? What

1:24:46

do you attribute the success of

1:24:48

this business to? Oh, I don't

1:24:50

think it can be either, or

1:24:52

I think there was a lot

1:24:54

of hard work, different hard work,

1:24:56

different hard work along the way,

1:24:58

but... There's so much that we've

1:25:00

talked about today that is like,

1:25:02

and then we had this amazing

1:25:04

opportunity and then this really cool

1:25:06

thing happens. So I think the

1:25:08

luck kind of came to us

1:25:10

because we were looking for it.

1:25:12

You know, we didn't pass by

1:25:14

opportunities that in hindsight were really

1:25:16

amazing lucky opportunities that we had.

1:25:18

I'll say, you know. I go

1:25:20

for a paddleboard or a bike

1:25:22

ride pretty much every morning to

1:25:24

earn my beer calories. And when

1:25:26

I get all the way out,

1:25:28

whether it's on water, on a

1:25:30

bike trail, I always kind of

1:25:32

say the same mantra, which is

1:25:34

thank you for this beautiful day,

1:25:36

thank you for this beautiful place,

1:25:38

thank you for my beautiful life,

1:25:40

and that is from my days

1:25:42

of being a pretty rebellious teenager,

1:25:44

not knowing where things would go,

1:25:46

the biggest part of luck for

1:25:48

me was meeting. Mariah. That's Sam

1:25:50

and Mariah Caledoni, founders of Dogfish

1:25:52

Head Craft Brewery. Is there anything

1:25:54

like totally off limits when it

1:25:56

comes to flavoring beers? Like I

1:25:58

don't know, would you use like

1:26:00

raw tuna or I don't know

1:26:02

like... This human saliva guy, you

1:26:04

gotta come back the next time

1:26:06

we do our Cheetia beer and

1:26:08

we chewed the corn and that

1:26:10

was a good one. I don't

1:26:12

think I could drink human saliva

1:26:14

beer. I just don't think I

1:26:16

could do it. It's sold out,

1:26:18

wow. We boil it, we boil

1:26:20

it. Spit happens. Hey, thanks so

1:26:22

much for listening to the show

1:26:24

this week. Please make sure to

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And if you're interested in insights,

1:26:34

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1:26:36

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1:26:38

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sign up for my newsletter at

1:26:42

guyraus.com or on substag. This episode

1:26:44

was produced by Alex Chung with

1:26:46

music composed by Romtina Rablui. It

1:26:48

was edited by Neva Grant with

1:26:51

research help from Catherine Sifer. Our

1:26:53

production staff also includes Carla Estez,

1:26:55

J.C. Howard, John Isabella, Chris Mussini,

1:26:57

Sam Paulson, Kerry Thompson, and Elaine

1:26:59

Coates. I'm Guy Ross and you've

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