The founders of Dogfish Head brewery say when they launched 26 years ago, they had no idea the journey it would take them on.
Now, Sam and Mariah Calagione have a new book chronicling their company’s history.
They wrote The Dogfish Head Book: 26 Years of Off-Centered Adventures with Andrew Greeley, innkeeper at the Dogfish Inn in Lewes.
Mariah Calagione says she’s served as the unofficial company photographer over the years, so she took on deciding which ones made the book.
“I had boxes and files and hard drives in multiple locations," Mariah Calagione said. "So I spent hours and hours of - sort of going through everything we had, whether it was clippings or photos. So that was really a fun process and took us down a lot of memory lanes. And Sam and Andrew and I would text back and forth about who was in the photo and where we were and what was the story.”
The book also includes stories and co-worker profiles that help tell the brewery’s history.
The book chronicles the brewery’s history through pictures and stories, including their initial need to change state law to even get the business off the ground.
“We were naive as 20-somethings and I didn’t read the rules that said it was technically illegal to open a brewery in the State of Delaware, because after prohibition that meant it was legal federally to open a brewery but every state had to engage with their own lawmakers to make it legal and ours (Delaware) it wasn’t done yet," Sam Calagione said. "So I quickly went there (to Legislative Hall in Dover) and I asked which one is the House, which one is the Senate.”
Sam Calagione says he worked with a Wilmington attorney to draft legislation making the needed change.
You can pick up a copy of the book at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach or online at Amazon.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
