One Giant Stumble

October 5, 2013 2:33 PM

While profiling Dogfish Head's new 'Celest-Jewel-Ale' moon dust brew, Outside online took a look at some of the good and bad scientific innovations in beer containment recently:: Beck's playable Edison bottle • Natty Light in 'space' • Budweiser's bowtie beercan • Heineken's lightsaber bottle.
posted by mannequito (29 comments total)

I am sad that DFH has gone down this road. Gimmicks are for losers. I just want good beer. And get off my lawn!
posted by shockingbluamp at 2:49 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Scheming to trick consumers into not noticing that there's less Budweiser in every can is a case of two wrongs making a right.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:58 PM on October 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

Dogfish has been doing gimmicks for a while. They just happen to be really tasty gimmicks, so no one really minds.
posted by naju at 3:01 PM on October 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

DFH's moondust brew is gimmicky but that is the kind of thing they do -- the do cool stuff with beer and push the limits of it. (I'm not as into their beer as I used to be but I still admire them. I will even more so if they bring back Fort.)

So I think it's weird that it's included on the same level as the Bud bowtie can and the Heineken light-up bottle. Those things aren't making the beer new. They're just distractions. You can think it's silly to put moondust in a beer but at least it's a different beer with or without the moondust.
posted by darksong at 3:05 PM on October 5, 2013

'Celest-Jewel-Ale' moon dust brew,

This should be Luna-Jewel-Ale, duh.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:32 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's like people don't even think about things.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:33 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I remember the dark ages, when we young servicemen would buy Olympia Beer because it was cheaper. The epithany came when through a drunken, smoked-up haze someone noticed that the cans only held 11 ounces.
posted by lobstah at 3:55 PM on October 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

One of the big US beers keeps advertising about its new can that flows better so that you can drink faster. They're basically saying, "This shit sucks but you can chug these cans so fast, you'll barely notice."
posted by octothorpe at 4:07 PM on October 5, 2013

8 beer innovations we'd actually use
posted by Muddler at 4:07 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like the idea of a randomly flashing beer bottle. If I drink enough alcohol, it could trigger a seizure. This way I can drink a lot less to the same effect. Win-win!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:08 PM on October 5, 2013

I'm really disappointed that the Edison bottle link was Beck's the beer and not Beck the artist. After his sheet music album, this seems right up his alley.
posted by Crankatator at 4:11 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love Dogfish Head. This beer seems a bit silly, but then it's a really limited run that's obviously not intended for general production, so I can forgive the gimmickyness. At least it's an interesting gimmick. They make a ton of other strange beers that are almost all extremely delicious, and I'm glad that they're out there, doing their weird little thing.
posted by Scientist at 4:14 PM on October 5, 2013

Is it good? Midas Touch was the first beer that got me really into beer (based on the New Yorker article about Dogfish) so always got a soft spot for them.
posted by jcruelty at 4:15 PM on October 5, 2013

I mean, without Dogfish Head's 90-minute IPA we'd probably not have had the super-IPA fad, which while definitely a fad was at least pretty fun while it lasted and resulted in some good niche beers. And the 90-minute IPA itself is still an excellent brew, though not exactly my go-to choice.
posted by Scientist at 4:15 PM on October 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Dogfish has also worked with historians and done some really neat sounding small batches based on lost brewing techniques and recipes, though I have never been able to actually try one. In short, Dogfish is awesome and there will be no besmirching thankyouverymuch.
posted by Think_Long at 4:29 PM on October 5, 2013

Dogfish Head sponsored the opening gala of the 2012 Archaeological Institute of America/American Philological Association joint meeting in Philly, which meant that everyone in attendance got to try one of their historical beers (Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, Tahenket, maybe another one too). The keynote speech, given by a molecular archaeologist who worked on one of the beers, was basically one long DFH infomercial, but no one seemed to mind for some reason.


(the reason is that archaeologists drink a lot)
posted by oinopaponton at 4:40 PM on October 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

DFH's moondust brew is gimmicky but that is the kind of thing they do -- the do cool stuff with beer and push the limits of it.

So true...I consider their 120 minute IPA to be the best of all possible gimmicks. If I could ever find more than four bottles at a time, I'd have a fridge full of the stuff. I consider it to be low calorie beer, because I'm never going to drink more than two at a time.
posted by Edgewise at 4:47 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

This isn't a mass produced can with hypercolor mountains so I won't look down on it as some gimmick. It's more of a beerformance art piece you can only get at their flagship bar in Rehoboth Beach, DE. If you happen to be in that area, it's worth a lunch stop. Delicious food and the 120 minute IPS Edgewise mentioned was on tap last time I was there.
posted by cmfletcher at 5:03 PM on October 5, 2013

Before any people actually went to the moon, no one knew what to expect. And the unknown often leads to fear. People were afraid that the astronauts would catch some kind of space disease from the Moon and bring it back to Earth.

So, for three of the Apollo missions, astronauts were quarantined when they came back to Earth.


And these guys are putting Moon dust in their beer? Are they crazy?
posted by eye of newt at 5:23 PM on October 5, 2013

Guess what: Ground-up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:44 PM on October 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

I got to see Sam Calagione give a talk a few years ago, and while he did devote a lot of time to the Midas Touch story, he also talked about how he and Jim Koch got into an informal contest to see who could brew the highest alcohol-content beer. Calagione said that at one point he sent a 12 ounce bottle to the lab for analysis and they came back and said there was bad news and good news. The bad news was that the alcohol content didn't beat the latest from Sam Adams. The good news was that the Dogfish Head beer broke the record for most calories, at 666. He said they were thinking of releasing a "number of the beast" beer under that recipe but I guess decided against it.
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:25 PM on October 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Does anyone remember Glacier Bay beer from back in the nineties? It was truly awful beer, but the bottom of the bottle had a built-in opener, obviously for the next one.

This amazing technology led to me, on my twenty-first birthday, attempting to enter the back seat of a car by asking the passenger in front seat to learn forward, which would have worked if it weren't a four-door.
posted by 4ster at 6:31 PM on October 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

But moon dust is pure poison! On the plus side, you can make portal surfaces with it.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:54 PM on October 5, 2013

DFA Presents Dale Gribble's Pale Ale: Now With Pocket Sand.
posted by boo_radley at 6:57 PM on October 5, 2013

Just looked at the Heineken ad for the LED-loaded bottles. More and more it feels like "fuck it, the earth is broken anyway, who cares what crap we throw into the waste stream so long as it ups our profits for a while."
posted by kinnakeet at 7:20 PM on October 5, 2013

Am I the only one who was foolishly expecting the Beck's Edison bottle to play something off Odelay?
posted by ian1977 at 7:40 PM on October 5, 2013

Wolfdog, I warned you.
posted by eye of newt at 7:44 PM on October 5, 2013

Calagione kinda strikes me as the kind of attention-seeking character that I would find totally exhausting in person (a quality that is probably not uncommon among your captains-of-industry types), but DFH does a lot of neat stuff.
posted by box at 4:36 AM on October 6, 2013

~Pats his fresh 6-pack of Two-Hearted Ale on their little crowns, happy in knowing the only gimmick involved is that it's damned good beer.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:53 AM on October 6, 2013 [1 favorite]