A Bottle Of Beer That Will Never Let You Down
By Carrie Becker in Food on Mar 24, 2010 6:00PM
We understand it can become an over-whelming experience when peering into a beer cooler or down a long line of tap-handles. There was once a time when your selection was limited to domestic and imported. Now, we have cult-craft breweries entering the market faster than Dark Lord Day tickets sell-out. How do you call one brewer your home? Your constant? For us, it’s a combination of taste and reliability and for these reasons Dogfish Head is high on our list. Disagree?
Read our true-story on why they made us beer-geeked out….
8:30pm on a Sunday evening, we were winding down our relaxing weekend, trying to put off the thought of the impending case of the Mondays, and cracked open a bottle of Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo. It’s a malty, roasty, woody brew with some lovely vanilla and caramel flavors. And with a 12% ABV it usually helps us fall asleep…sometimes on the couch.
Unfortunately this brew had other plans, the flavor was way off and almost tasted of artificial grape juice. Since we typically have some sort of electronic mode of communication nearby, we shouted to our Twitter followers:
“agh! my dogfish head palo santo tastes like grape juice WTF…I’ve had corked wine but don’t know what to call this beer.”
Immediately, a few beverage enthusiasts were quick to begin diagnosing the problem but with no solution and the beer not tasting any better, we opened a different brew.
6:30am the next morning, we received the following response from Dogfish Head’s Twitter handle:
“Not good - can you DM me an email address? Our QC folks would love to get some details from you (bottle data, etc).”
What followed next was an introduction to the most nimble and concerned group of people who we didn’t even know existed. A chain of emails with quality control, Mariah (Sam Calagione’s wife and VP of Dogfish Head) and their local rep, Donn, began to flutter back and forth. Within two hours, Donn had stopped by our house to pick up the empty bottle and begin the investigation.
All of these people were so appreciative that this was called to their attention and that they could remedy the situation quickly. Mariah sent us some nice Dogfish Head coffee mugs and Donn was fantastic and dropped off some special beers a couple of weeks later.
Luckily, our bad beer was a solitary incident and no other bottles that are known leaked out. Dogfish Head was not certain of the issue but the Palo Santo may have mixed with their Midas Touch, which contains grapes. Regardless, problem solved.
Next time we open a bottle it will likely be Dogfish Head because they make a damn good beer and well its nice knowing they’ll take care of it if its not up to snuff.
Got a good story about a rock-star beer company. Tell us.