Monday, August 30, 2010 at 9:02AM Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Company and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery sit down for a chat while brewing the second installment of their collaborative brew PortaMarillo using two native New Zealand ingredients, tamarillo's and pohutakawa wood chips, at Luke's brewery in Auckland, NZ.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 12:34PM Leading Kiwi brewer, Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing fame is about to embark on his third international collaborative brew, this time with one of the biggest craft beer players in the USA, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head.
Dogfish Head is among the fastest growing breweries in the USA, sharing Epic’s philosophy of producing full-flavoured, robust brews for passionate lovers of craft beer. Its motto, ‘Off-centered ales for off-centered people,” has been a winning one. Starting out in 1995 making 10 gallons of beer at a time, Dogfish Head has grown into a 110 person company, selling beer in 28 states and three countries.
Similar to Nicholas’ profile here in New Zealand, Calagione is somewhat of a local hero in the craft beer industry in The States, making for a well-aligned collaborative brew partnership.
The project will take an even greater significance when the beer is entered into the BrewNZ Beer Awards this August under the Festive Brew category.
A Festive Brew is a beer that has never been brewed or made commercially available before. This year’s theme, ‘Let's go Native’ stipulates the beer must include one or more uniquely Kiwi ingredients.
Nicholas has a history of off-shore collaborations in brewing.
In March 2009 he brewed a batch of his Epic Pale Ale at Everard’s Brewery in Leicester, UK for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival.
In April 2009 he teamed up with Thornbridge Brewery in the Peak District, UK, where he brewed a batch of Thornbridge Epic Halcyon IPA with fellow kiwi brewer Kelly Ryan. The result saw the beer rank 10th best beer in the UK for 2010 by website RateBeer.com.
In February this year, the pair reunited when Kelly came to New Zealand to brew the Epic Thornbridge Stout. At release, the beer was so popular it had to go out on allocation as demand was nearly tripled the amount brewed.
Epic Brewing is now being exported into Australia and the USA and consistently ranks in the top five selling craft beers in New Zealand.
