Brewing Up a Business

I read Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Enrepreneurship From the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery by Sam Calagione. If you live in the midwest it's doubtful you've ever heard of Dogfish Head, actually if you live on the east coast you're probably just as likely to have never heard of Dogfish Head brewery. Sam Calagione founded Dogfish Head because of his love of craft brewing and experimenting with different beer styles. Calagione likes to use nontraditional ingredients and infuse them into traditional beer styles making them his own. His brews are the premium of the premium, costing, in many cases $10/6-pack. Beers such as Immort Ale and Raison D'Etre are not really accessible to Joe Six-Pack swilling Budweiser sixers, but to beer geeks these are great flavors and interesting brews.

Anyway, Calagione tells of his experiences, failures and successes in opening his microbrewery and brewpub. It's an interesting story, expecially for someone who enjoys entrepreneurial stories, small business and most of all beer. It's like the perfect storm of stories for me. Dogfish Head Brewery would fit perfectly in the "Small Giants" book. Calagione is seeking to make the most creative brew, not necessarily the beer for the average beer drinker. Dogfish Head beer is for the beer geek and is pushing the bar for breweries nationwide.

Calagione tells a compelling and entertaining story. His management and leadership insights are fun and well reasoned, citing real situation examples that really cement ideas in your head better than many management books. "Brewing Up a Business" is a real accessible management book, much more accessible than their beer, which I've never tried. Sam if you read this send me a sixer, I'd love to try it. If you really want I'd like to have it on tap at the house. At the very least, I'll look for it on my next trip east.