The annual trip to Delaware for the horseshoe crab survey and visit to Dogfish Head was this past weekend. The weather was lovely and the counting was a challenge. We use a sampling technique and don’t count them all, but we estimated that there were about 15,000 crabs on the one kilometer of beach that we count at any given time. But this post is about beer not crabs.
Last year was perhaps the first year in ten that we didn’t swing by the Dogfish Head brewery. We visited Evolution Brewing last year. This year we were back on track and stopped by Dogfish Head on Sat shortly after arriving in town. The tasting room had changed slightly and expanded into a new area where they were selling shirts and stuff. You can buy beer there, but I was glad that they were still doling out the four free samples. This visit they had the first two as fixed beers and then I could pick two from about 10 other options. The first two were Festina Peche and something else light. These were served outside. I chose Raison D’etre and Palo Santo Marron for my other two. Raison D’etre was the first beer I ever had from Dogfish Head and has always been a sentimental favorite. Palo is just so good, I can never pass it up. Thick, dark, chewy. Like molassas mixed with motor oil. Yummy.
We checked into our B&B, then headed off to the new place in town (Milford), Mispillion River Brewing. They seemed to be trying to cement their flagship beers and didn’t have much that was unusual. The one exception was a Hefeweizen called Little Dictator that had added Jalapenos. It wasn’t spicy, but had a nice pepper flavor.
We headed straight for the beach to see how the crabs were looking for this year and found them to be plentiful which was a nice surprise.
Sunday morning after breakfast, we drove to Lewes to walk around the two small blocks of shops in the downtown area and also to see the Dogfish Head Inn. About three blocks north of the shops I saw an old green pickup truck with the DFH logo on the side. I had a suspicion that the owner, Sam Calagione, lived in Lewes and now I suspect he drives an old green pickup.
After Lewes, we headed for Rehoboth Beach. We always enjoy walking from the traffic circle to the boardwalk and back to the DFH brewpub. We stopped in for a late lunch around 2pm. As usual there were some funky old world spiced beers. Birra Etrusca Bronze was the most spiced and not my favorite. Sixty One, which I had last year, was as good as I remember it. It is an IPA, but has grape musk added giving it a beer/wine cooler vibe. My favorite was the Two-Rabbit Pulque. I have no idea what that means, but it is a 10%ABV brew that is slightly sour with loads of berry flavor and a spicy pepper finish. Very interesting. I really wanted to bring some of this home, but as a brewhouse exclusive they won’t fill growlers.
We did the horseshoe crab count Sunday night with three other people which made it go quickly. It was a lovely evening and we even got to start in the last half hour of sunlight. We counted about a thousand and crabs are coming up and going back into the water every five or ten minutes. We are just getting a statistical sample as part of a 20 year research project.
After breakfast in the morning we headed to a greenhouse where we like to buy plants and then made our last beer stop in Georgetown at 16 Mile Brewing. I got five samples from the limited editions menu. They had eight of their regular beers and eight specials. I liked the Gutentart, a cherry sour blonde and the Baby’s Lunch, a double IPA weighing in at 116 IBUs and 10.7 ABV. Juicy Fruit was the mango pineapple offering and Seed-Free & Joy was the watermelon beer. Both were interesting.
