These are the best beers to drink outside according to dogfish head founder and brewer

Sam Calagione

by Steven John


A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the luminaries of the American and international beer scene, the founder and (often iconoclastic) brewer behind the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Sam Calagione.


Our long, far-reaching conversation covered everything from the Dogfish origin story to how he and his wife, Mariah, and the brewery team came up with some of their wildest and most famous brews (the 120-minute IPA, for example? Wild is the right word) to family fun in the outdoors to conservation work and more.


One topic that we stayed on for a while was a perfect pairing of two of life’s great pleasures: being outside and enjoying great beer. I figured there was no one better to talk to about the best beers to enjoy outdoors than a man known for loving both. So, about halfway through our chat, I asked Sam: “So what is your favorite beer to drink while outside? Be it by the fire, on the water, or during a break from a day trip… what is your favorite outside beer?”

“So I'll answer for Dogfish and then styles in general,” Sam Calagione replied. “Being out on the water and outdoors – that's my favorite thing to do. I’m looking out my window at the canal here in coastal Delaware, and I can almost see the four blocks down to our waterfront hotel where the Dogfish Inn on the Harbor at Lewes has a big sign I painted over the mantle that says, ‘Welcome to Lewes. Mother Nature, let's do this.’ And there's nothing more awesome than getting out in the bounty of Mother Nature to just take in the beauty, get a workout, earn your beer calories, but also with Dogfish because all of our recipes are built around these culinary greens that grow on our protected natural lands, that's important to us.”

“And water specifically, obviously we're a nautical brand with a shark as our logo, and the world's mostly water, the human body's mostly water, beer's mostly water – I don't think that's a coincidence. So when I'm out on the water, I most often drink our SeaQuench Ale, which is brewed with sea salt from the mouth of the Chesapeake and from off the coast of Maine, and [with] black lime. So it's really citrusy, light, and refreshing. And that's probably my favorite beer specific to Dogfish. Style wise, I also just love being outdoors and drinking light, crisp pilsners. We know that volumetrically, the fastest growing style is still IPAs, and hazy IPAs get a lot of love, but pilsners are just super crisp, poundable, sessionable, outdoorsy beers in my mind.”


“And what do you think is the best beer to drink next to the campfire on a cold night?” I asked next. To this, Sam had an answer that creates an immediate Pavlovian effect – just a fair warning, you’re about to really… really want a beer….

“Well, we do a beer called Campfire Amplifier, so it's kind of a loaded question for us. How that [came around] was we were sitting with some beer lovers, at the fire pit at our hotel, and drinking a World Wide Stout, which is the strongest stout that Dogfish brews, and we were having s'mores while we were drinking it, and I said: ‘Wouldn't it be cool to just, like, what if we put the s'mores in the beer?’ So Camp Amp for us is a beer that's brewed with dehydrated marshmallow powder, cocoa nibs, and crunched up graham crackers as well.”

Yeah, that’s a perfect outdoor cold weather beer if ever we have heard of one. So got that? Salt beers and pilsners in summer, rich stouts in winter. And IPAs whenever you want.