Latest news with #Calagione
Boston Globe
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
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.' Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Sam Calagione throws out the first pitch at Fenway for Grateful Dead night. Advertisement 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.' Advertisement 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
Fox News
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Grateful Dead and new beer celebrate 'long strange trip' together
The Grateful Dead keeps on "truckin'" 60 years later – this time with a new year-round beer. Dogfish Head has released its new Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale nationwide to coincide with the Delaware-based brewery's 30th anniversary and the iconic American band's founding 60 years ago. Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale is available in six packs of 12-ounce cans at major grocery store chains throughout the country, Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head's founder, told Fox News Digital. The new beer marks the first time Dogfish Head has collaborated with the band on a year-round brew. Several limited-edition beers were released since the partnership began more than a decade ago. Dogfish Head's first Grateful Dead-inspired beer was American Beauty, an imperial pale ale. "American Beauty" was the name of the Grateful Dead's 1970 album that included the song "Truckin,'" the highest-charting single in the band's history. Calagione said a lot of the band's fans – i.e., "Deadheads" – "were asking us to bring back a Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead collaboration." The result was the Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale. "It's a totally new recipe" that is 5.3% alcohol by volume, Calagione said. The newest Grateful Dead beer is juicier than it is bitter and contains honey and oat granola in the recipe, Calagione also said. For more Lifestyle articles, visit "We designed this recipe to be hoppy like a traditional craft pale ale but also to be juicy and approachable," he added. The Grateful Dead is one of Calagione's favorite bands. He recalled being 12 years old and passing by an independent record store in Massachusetts when he first saw the cover of "Shakedown Street." He said it had a "cool sort of gigolo-looking cartoon character swinging through the streets" and knew he wanted "a piece of that," so he used his allowance money to buy it. Calagione has befriended members of the band, he said, and had the support of Rhino, the Grateful Dead's record label, and David Lemieux, the band's longtime archivist and historian. He wanted "a piece of that" — so he used his allowance money to buy it. This is the first time that Dogfish Head has used the "Steal Your Face" skull graphic from the band's 1976 live album cover — which Calagione said "is by far and away the Grateful Dead's most recognized iconography." Bob Weir, who founded the band with the late Jerry Garcia in 1965, and Mickey Hart, who was with the band from 1967 to 1971 and again from 1974 until the final concert in 1995, currently perform under the name Dead & Company. The beer is intended to appeal to "Deadheads of all ages," Calagione said, and "already the reception and traction that it's getting is something that we have not seen for a new beer launch in decades." Calagione attributes it to a "grassroots" marketing campaign that's helping to "really get the word right out directly to the beer lovers and music lovers." Dogfish Head's Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale is available at retailers such as Kroger, Publix, Wegmans and Whole Foods.
