Sam Calagione hopes Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale will be a hit
Calagione was at Fenway for Grateful Dead night, accompanied by his latest beer release, Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale. Back in the box a few minutes after his first pitch, Calagione exhaled.
'I was in the non-embarrassing zone,' he told a reporter, before hugging and high-fiving his family and friends. 'Just the right amount of liquid courage.'
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Sam Calagione throws out the first pitch at Fenway for Grateful Dead night.
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A Greenfield native, Calagione remembers coming to games with his grandfather, who lived in Medford. Calagione went to boarding school with Ted Williams's son, and recalls a banquet where The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived sat down at his table. Throwing out the first pitch felt like a culmination of those memories, as well as some career accomplishments.
Though it hasn't been around long, Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale is now Dogfish Head's No. 2-selling beer, behind the iconic 60-Minute IPA. The 5.3 percent ABV beer is made with Azacca and El Dorado hops, the sustainable grain kernza, and a little bit of oat and honey-infused granola.
'We said, let's make a beer that has some hop character to it, but that'll appeal to the broadest demo of legal age, deadheads, not just hop heads,' says Calagione. 'So in other words, not just craft beer focus, but a really broad demographic.'
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Calagione is in the Dead demo himself, having recently caught a show at The Sphere in Las Vegas. For his first pitch, he wore a tie-dyed Dead shirt with Bill Walton's name and number on the back as a tribute to the former Celtics great and Dead superfan. Calagione has early memories of the band as well.
'In Greenfield, right on Main Street, was an independent record store. I remember walking by as, like, a 14- or 15-year-old and seeing the cover to 'Shakedown Street,' which is probably not their most renowned album. It's probably their most dancy, almost disco-esque album. I fell in love with it.'
Calagione hopes fans will love the beer, too.
Gary Dzen can be reached at
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