USA, DE: Dog Pirate Brewing Company starts brewing outside Lewes

Eight years after opening Beach Time Distilling on Nassau Road outside Lewes, owner Greg Christmas is adding beer into the mix, the Cape Gazette reported on August 23.

After more than a year working to secure state and federal approvals, Christmas recently started brewing beer under the name Dog Pirate Brewing Company. The first two brews – a chocolate porter and a session IPA – are now available at the tasting room, with several styles to be released in the coming weeks and months.

Before opening Beach Time Distilling in 2015, Christmas worked for seven years as a plant engineer at Dogfish Head. Christmas said he had considered opening his own brewery before landing on a distillery, deciding to bet on something he was more comfortable making at that time. In the years since, he’s honed his brewing skills, which he’s been doing at home since the 1980s. Inside the barn-like building at the corner of Nassau and New roads, Christmas has his brewing equipment sequestered in the back of the building away from the distillery, which is required by law.

In the tank now is a hazy IPA. While it’s not his personal beer of choice, Christmas knows it’s one of the more popular styles right now. After that, he said, he’s looking forward to brewing beers that satisfy his own tastes. He said his technique lends itself to certain types of beer, particularly Belgian and some English styles, which happen to be the kinds of beer he enjoys. The next beers on tap are a saison and a Trappist ale. He said customers should expect his beer to be made in a fairly traditional way.

“I’m not going to throw a bunch of weird ingredients and stuff in there,” he said. “That’s not to say I’m a purist ... but the tools a brewer has available are pretty broad. You don’t have to rely on fruit infusions to get fruit flavors in your beer if you know how to coax the yeast and ingredients to produce those.”

Christmas uses a 300-liter fermenter, or about 80 gallons, but the actual yield varies from beer to beer. For example, he produced much more of the porter than the session IPA.

He’s a member of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, which he said is a great resource for someone like him who’s just starting. The MBAA offers members a lot of information on its website, and it produces brewing podcasts.

So where did the name Dog Pirate Brewing Company come from?

“We had a dog that we rescued. He was hard-headed and full of what I called swashbuckling shenanigans. And he earned the name Dog Pirate from all the things he did,” Christmas said.

The Dog Pirate is memorialized in the brewery’s official logo.

On the distillery side, Christmas added canned cocktails to his offerings about six years ago.

“That’s really what made the brewery possible, because we really don’t have the space for a walk-in cooler to have kegs of beer and that kind of stuff,” he said.

One day while canning cocktails, it dawned on him that the canning machine could serve two purposes, and allow him to brew and can beer. He doesn’t plan to offer any draft beer at the tasting room room, but he will probably keg some beer for festivals or one-offs at the tasting room. He’s also considering buying firkins so he can occasionally offer those to customers.

Dog Pirate Brewing Co. and Beach Time Distilling, 32191 Nassau Road in Lewes, are open from noon to 6 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday; noon to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and noon to 4 p.m., Sunday.

25 August, 2023