How Dogfish Head Became the Official Beer of the Grateful Dead

The best mornings for Sam Calagione, a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Deadhead, begin on the 19-foot whaler he takes out on the Atlantic, where he can fish and listen to the Dead. After carefully navigating the canal near his Delaware home to the right spot, he drops anchor, hits shuffle on one of the three iPhones he’s brought with him (he has two backups in case he drops one) and waits for the stripers to bite. Then the charismatic brewer, who co-founded Dogfish Head Craft Brewery with his wife, Mariah, in 1995, can work on his tan, sip a beer, and live the Dead. 

“I try to listen to the Dead for at least an hour a day,” he says, grinning, on a visit to Rolling Stone’s midtown Manhattan office, where he relaxes in a small conference room after admiring the iconic photos the magazine has on its walls, including one of Jerry Garcia & Company. “It’s like how your doctor says, ‘Have an apple a day.’ I have two IPAs and an hour of Dead live a day, and it seems to be keeping my head straight.”

The brewer, who looks carefree in a bright yellow hoodie repping the ROIR record label, and his business partner, Canadian-born Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux, dressed in a short-sleeve button-up that hides Grateful Dead accessories all over his person, laugh together. 

“I like that,” Lemieux says. “We should start telling people to do that.”

“It’s better than, ‘Take two and call me the morning,’” Calagione rejoins.

Calagione and Lemieux have worked closely together since 2011, when they launched the partnership that made Dogfish Head the official beer of the Grateful Dead. Their first collaboration, smartly branded American Beauty, was a strong pale ale — but it was a top-shelf brew packaged in a champagne bottle, designed for special occasions. The partnership continued, and they’ve since made the beer more accessible. Calagione captures that spirit by saying, “Let’s make beers that prove that every day is a special occasion.”

This ethos also fits the vision of the folks who run the Grateful Dead’s business. The band’s team at Rhino, the Dead’s record label, first floated the idea of partnering with a beer company as an extension of Grateful Dead branding, which covers everything from skis to skateboards, shirts to wallets, since drinking a cold beer before or after a Dead show is just “part of Grateful Dead culture,” Lemieux explains.

Some folks in the band’s organization initially wanted to partner with a big beer company, but fortuitously, somebody countered idea with Dogfish Head. “Bob Weir famously said, ‘The Dead are misfit power,’” Lemieux says. “So yeah, the Dead are huge, but they’re off-centered, if you will.” Together, the Dead and Dogfish Head developed brews with misfit power that anybody can now afford and enjoy.

Calagione leans forward in his chair at the conference room and cracks open two cans he brought with him in an icy bucket. “You don’t have to finish both but at least try both to get an idea of how we thought through having them be very balanced, but distinct from each other,” he says. [Editor’s note: we didn’t have to finish the beer … but we did.]

Grateful Dead Citrus Daydream Lager has a medium body and not too many bubbles. It’s just bitter enough but doesn’t have an aftertaste. The Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale, on the other hand, is deliciously bitter with tiny, effervescent bubbles that never overwhelm your palate. It’s a pale ale wholly and thoroughly.

“We said, let’s make two very approachable and complimentary beers distinct from each other,” Calagione explains. “They’re both exactly 5.3 percent alcohol, so very approachable in ABV. They both have two key different hop varieties, and they each have a very sustainability-oriented grain.” The company brews the Juicy Pale Ale with granola and a grain called Kernza, the latter of which Calagione says “sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere at, like, 10 times what an acre of traditional brewers’ barley would do.” They make the Citrus Daydream Lager with lime, lemongrass, lemon peel, and the grain fonio, “which is an African grain that’s been cultivated since before humans invented the wheel.” 

It matters deeply to Calagione that Deadheads understand that the brand is on their side, that Dogfish Head share the same values about things like sustainability with the band, “that we care and we’re all in.” He says he feels honored that the Dead and Rhino have granted Dogfish Head use of iconic artwork like the Dead’s dancing bear, in the past, and for the current beers, the “Stealie” (aka the “Steal Your Face” skull logo) for their products. 

Another way they’ve shown their commitment to Deadhead culture has been through limited-edition vinyl releases. Dogfish Head is the official beer of Record Store Day and has gotten in on the festivities beginning in 2025 via a series of limited-edition Grateful Dead compilations titled On a Back Porch.

The third volume arrived last Saturday. It contains six rare live recordings, notably “Samson and Delilah,” captured in 1976, a nine-minute rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around,” from 1978, and the band’s biggest hit, “Touch of Grey,” from 1989, among others. As with its predecessors, Lemieux worked closely with Calagione, Calagione’s son, Sammy, and a friend of Sammy’s named Dash, culling through their favorite recordings (some of which were selected on the brewer’s boat).

“As with the beer, these albums are one of the easiest co-productions I’ve ever done,” Lemieux says. “We produce these albums in a few minutes. It’s a few texts. The ‘Samson and Delilah’ on there from June of ’76, Sam said, ‘Hey, what do you think of that?’ I know it well because everything on there is from previously released Grateful Dead albums that are out of print on vinyl or CD. So we go for a lot of deeper cuts. They’ve been tons of fun to make. To me, they’re almost like a beginner’s guide to listening to the Grateful Dead.”

Lemieux understands the need for a path into the Dead’s expansive catalog since he has worked with the band since 1999 and has personally listened to each of the 1,800 recordings of Grateful Dead concerts in the band’s vault; about 1,500 of them sound good enough for release by his estimation. It took him roughly eight years to get through everything, and since then he’s taken another eight or nine years of notes as he plans the group’s archival releases, and his own personal favorites for his “Dave’s Pick’s” series, which has been going since 2012. He estimates he now spends at least six hours a day listening to the Grateful Dead. “I never get tired of it,” he says, beaming.

When he says that, both Rolling Stone and Calagione want to know how he knows what’s good when comparing 1,500 concerts? “I listen for moments that are different,” he says. “When I’d go to Dead shows, I used to call it the ‘frenzy point.’ That’s when the band, six guys onstage, hit the X factor and you can feel the energy in the place, and all of a sudden, you’ve got 36,000 fists in the air at Madison Square Garden, because it’s a release. That can happen once a night, or it can happen 10 times a night. It can happen during ‘Me and My Uncle,’ or it can happen during ‘Scarlet Begonias.’ I also listen for Jerry giving an extra inflection on a lyric or Bobby [Weir] screaming a little louder on ‘Estimated Prophet,’ where he goes off at the end of the song. When it gets a little bit more extreme and more intense, it means that they’re feeling it.”

Lemieux recently helped launch a new streaming service, Play Dead, via Nugs, which offered more than 400 full Grateful Dead concerts, 20 of which never came out before, on its first day, with more on the way. “We’ll be releasing two shows a week, so 100 shows a year,” he says. “The ultimate goal is to get the vault online.” 

The archivist also recognizes Deadheads’ desire for physical product (like Dogfish Head’s On a Back Porch LPs) and says there’s no end in sight for his own “Dave’s Picks” compilations, with a new big box set to be released every year. Although he’s excited for a surprise release to be announced later this year, he’s especially thrilled about what 2027 holds in store. “It’s the 60th anniversary of the first record, 50th anniversary of Terrapin Station, of the release of The Grateful Dead Movie, of the famous Cornell show, the famous Englishtown and New Jersey shows,” he says. “There’s a lot of big anniversaries in the Grateful Dead world next year. This year has some, but next year is a big year for us.”

On a Back Porch offers a bite-size portion (or perhaps a better analogy would be a beer flight) of what the Dead’s vault contains. “Live concerts is where the magic happens, and these records are a good place to start,” Lemieux says. “These are really fun albums, and they’re 45 minutes of released, but really hard-to-find, Grateful Dead music. So we’re loving it.”

The special records and the band’s partnership with Dogfish Head are all part of a larger culture, according to Lemieux. “First and foremost, what we do is music,” he says. “For Deadheads, I think part of their identity of being a Deadhead is they want to show it. Right now, I am wearing Grateful Dead socks, a Grateful Dead belt, Grateful Dead phone case, a Grateful Dad hat, and a Grateful Dead wallet. This is not because I get it for free; it’s because I do really like this stuff. Our identity is being a Deadhead. I think we all thought having a beer is part of Grateful Dead lifestyle, and that’s what it came down to: it fits in with Grateful Dead lifestyle.”

Similarly, Calagione says he’s always admired the community Deadheads have built. “Certainly, a big influence on how we’ve been growing [the Dogfish Head] brand has been watching how the Grateful Dead’s community has been audience-first, commerce second,” he says. “We never let the tail of money wag the dog of inspiration at Dogfish Head. So this has really been the most rewarding collaborative project we’ve ever been involved with, and the most durable. It’s so cool to see people my son’s age, in their twenties, getting into the Dead to the degree that we did when David and I were young.”

Calagione is eager to make new fans, too. As they’re leaving, the brewmeister pops his head into another Rolling Stone conference room, introduces himself, and tosses out Dogfish Head/Grateful Dead hats to the execs. “You get a hat, and you get a hat,” he says. And of course, he left a cold bucket of the band’s beer for everyone to enjoy.