Mark your calendars. The date has now been set for the debut of Brew Masters, the Discovery channel television show that will star Sam Calagione. It will debut on Sunday, November 21 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.
Here’s part of the press release:
It’s cold, it’s comforting, it’s beer….but for Sam Calagione, founder of one of America’s leading craft brewers Dogfish Head Brewery, beer is a passion, a business and a personal quest for best, most imaginative brews. Premiering Sunday, November 21 at 10 PM E/P on Discovery Channel, BREW MASTERS follows Sam and his partners in suds as they travel the country and the world sourcing exotic ingredients and discovering ancient techniques to produce beers of astounding originality.
From chocolate to oysters to tomatoes, Sam is constantly pushing his team and himself to innovate and celebrate the amazing world of beer and beer making. The imagination of the Dogfish Head team is matched only by the fun they inject into every facet of their jobs. Beer tasting meetings in the conference room with co-workers, a bocce ball league in the parking lot, filming original rap videos in the brewery plant, its all in a days work for BREW MASTERS.
BREW MASTERS taps more than just kegs and barrels, it unlocks a fascinating history of beer making, showcasing the ingenuity and passion behind our love affair with those alluring suds and how it played a role in building civilizations, said Clark Bunting, President and General Manager of Discovery Channel.
Running a successful business also requires inspiration, so BREW MASTERS hits the road for the ultimate beer tasting road trip. Sam sets out to recreate ancient ales that have been discovered at sites around the world from Egypt to Peru. He travels to Rome to research old world Italian beers as inspiration for a new site in New York with Mario Batali. A visit to New Zealand introduces the idea of making the first tomato based beer. And back home, Sam is tasked to come up with a commemorative beer called Bitches Brew to celebrate the 40th anniversary release of Miles Davis famous recording.
Beer has always been my passion. It is so much more than what you see in the glass. I’m excited to share the diligence, daring and creativity that we pour into our work, said Calagione.
BREW MASTERS is produced for Discovery Channel by Zero Point Zero Productions. Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia are executive producers. Tim Pastore is executive producer for Discovery Channel.
And Channel Guide magazine also mentions the new show for the fall lineup.
So it’s a show about Dogfish Head?
Beats me. I know as much as you do, though from the press release it does sound a little bit that way.
Yikey-doodles. That’s all I can say.
Ha, when you say “Yikey-doodles,” you’ve said it all.
Gotta lotta respect for the guy but (judging by the release) they shouldn’t call it “BrewMasters”, they should call it “Sam”.
I just hope Sam/Dogfish are not overexposing themselves. This is the sort of thing that I think can end up back-firing on them as craft beer fans are, by their nature, anti-establishment (for lack of a better term). They go against the big brewers out there when they drink. By being on TV, Sam is sort of taking a big step up into the realm of pop culture and away from the essence of craft beer. I just think that there may be some backlash from the craft beer community. And any new fans from this show aren’t going to be able to just jump right into DFH beers. They call themselves extreme for a reason.
Maybe I am wrong on this and it will work really well to promote the craft beer movement, but I worry. It’s what I do.
I don’t really think that all craft beer drinkers are “anti-establishment”. Then again, I don’t personally think that a beer made by a large company is inherently “evil” in any way. Faceless corporations are what’s evil, not the beer.
Speaking for myself, I think “the essence of craft beer” has more to do with the fact that it’s crafted and meant to be savored rather than guzzled through a funnel. To that end, I would expect that the “pop culture” backlash, if any, would come if DFH commemorated this TV appearance by brewing an adjunct lager advertised with bikini babes and talking frogs.
I don’t think this will be bad for Sam, or for Dogfish Head. Sam is a charismatic individual, and he comes across as very sincere. I think the enthusiasm and love he shows for the brewing process as well as the flavor and character of his beer is a welcome contrast to the aforementioned bikini-babe treatment of beer in the mainstream.