Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s production facility is based in Milton — near the Delaware coastline where folks from Washington, D.C., tend to vacation in the summer, heading to spots like Dewey and Rehoboth. When stuck with your family on a beach vacation, it’s a cool place to get away. Tours are even free, the layout and architecture on the grounds are definitely off-centered and the hour-long trek includes four free beer samples. There’s even a Dogfish Head hotel nearby.
According to Dogfish Head, here’s what you’ll enjoy:
- Cold Storage — breathe in the delicious smells in the huge refrigerator that stores all the real ingredients that go into its beers (it’s cold in there, so it’s brief!)
- Grain Handling Room — see what sets its grains apart from the rest.
- 200-bbl Brewhouse — see how we convert all that delicious starchy grain into wort.
- Palo and Oak Wood-Aging Room — normally locked, you can stop in there and learn about fermentation and wood aging beer. You also get to sample the freshest 60 Minute you’ve ever had and try some Palo Santo Marron, a wood-aged beer.
- Distillery — enjoy a keg-conditioned cocktail in the new distillery, get a primer on distillation and learn how Dogfish distills its beers into its new lineup of scratch-made spirits.
- Sam’s Stash — sample one of Dogfish Head’s vintage beers in the cage where Founder Sam stores beers for aging … anywhere from three to five years.
- Steampunk Treehouse — that crazy tree house you see outside the facilitates.
During the hour-long free tour, visitors can also view the packaging and distribution center. You’ll get to see the impressive bottling line highlighted in the video above and watch this beast in action. On the line, 4,000 bottles are depalletized in five minutes, 650 bottles are filled per minute and then a warehouse team keeps track of some 32,000 pallets of beer at a time. It’s an impressive operation that is only enhanced via the use of some funky downtempo beats, which you can enjoy in the video above.
