The People’s Republic of Flying Dog is now in session. It’s happy hour at Flying Dog Brewery, so here is your latest dose of irreverence.

Sometimes The Smallest Dogs Have The Loudest Bark

One of the fun things about our brewing facility in Maryland is that our bottling line previously ran some pretty interesting bottle sizes. Out of those old package sizes, a new revolution in craft beer has been born. We took the old Little Kings concept of small bottles and made one of the most unique packages available anywhere.

Introducing the Canis Major Mixed 8-pack of 7-ounce bottles. High-gravity beers pack quite a punch, and you might not want to drink an entire 11.5% ABV beer in one shot. These little puppies might be small, but they deliver all the awesomeness that our Canis Major series of beers has to offer. Plus, with two of each Canis Major style, these beers are perfect for sharing with friends. The Canis Major Mixed 8-pack is now available; bug your favorite retailer about availability.

It’s Cold In The Winter, But Our Beer And Soup Event Will Warm The Cockles Of Your Heart

It’s that time of the month again. No, not “that” time of the month. It’s the time of the month when we let you know about the Flying Dog Beer and Food Night at our brewery in Frederick. This month, we’re co-hosting it with a.k.a. Friscos and the theme is Beer and Soup. We are using a lottery-style system, so go to the event page on our website for details. Get your emails in by Jan 15. Which is tomorrow.

Gonzo Motivation

Let’s face it. After a few weeks of holiday parties and a bunch of days off, your motivation to get work done isn’t what it is supposed to be. But I’m guessing that the main motivator for any of you who watch the news these days is the horror of a soft economy and trying to find jobs during a shit-storm of corporate bailouts and dwindling corporate budgets while times are tough. Alas, you have forgotten one of the most motivating things of all time: the Corporate Motivational Poster.

We’ve all probably had those jobs where, in the break room, there are a few posters with the picturesque scenery and a bullshit motivational phrase underneath. And I’m sure that most of you have seen the joke version of these posters (make your own with flickr photos here).

But what you might not have seen is the Gonzo version of these generally terrible posters. Check out SloshSpot for a bunch of Hunter S. Thompson versions of these. Or you can click on the image below.

Which one is your favorite? Leave a comment on our blog version of this newsletter to vote.

We Kicked Ass At The Vail Big Beers, Belgians, And Barleywines Festival

For some of you who were lucky enough to be with us in Vail, Colorado last weekend, this is just a recap of the weekend. If you weren’t there, you completely missed out. The gods looked kindly upon us, and the Colorado mountains got hit with about 20 inches of the fresh snow a few days before we got there. So we had that going for us, which was nice. Our VP of Brewing Operations Matt Brophy flew into town from Frederick for the weekend, which was a special treat.

Friday night, we hosted a Beer Dinner at Centre V, and poured our Canis Major beers along side the spectacular beers of Russian River Brewing Company. Check out the menu at beerdinners.com. A hungry crowd of 120 people were with us and the whole night went swimmingly. My favorite course was the Shrimp & Scallops with Green Curry & White Beans, Arugula & Tomatoes, Paired with Russian River’s Beatification and our Double Dog Double Pale Ale. The spiciness of the Green Curry contrasted wonderfully with the hoppiness of Double Dog. We’ll have more on this at flyingdognews.com in the coming weeks.

The consumer tasting on Saturday was amazing, too. Six hours of people drinking beers no lower than 7% ABV made for some interesting people milling around our table. We poured all of our Canis Major beers, and even had a few bottles of the Dog Schwarz on hand to sample. We met a ton of wonderful people who were stoked on our beers, especially Kerberos Tripel. Check out more photos of the festival here.

Our Tweetup in Denver Was Ultra Bad-Ass Last Night

We held a tweetup last night at the Blake Street Tavern. A tweetup is a gathering of people who use Twitter. If the last year of talking about it hasn’t swayed you to use twitter, then perhaps the allure of free beer in the future might sway you over to the tweetosphere. Well, we promoted it on twitter and flyingdognews.com and 50 lucky people showed up to share in some free beer, appetizers and fun. Check out what people were saying about the tweetup here.

We will definitely be doing these in the future. So if you’re interested, join twitter and follow @flyingdog. We’ll be tweeting about future events, so keep an eye on our page. Questions on how to set up twitter? Email us at bullshit@flyingdogales.com.

Obamarama

We don’t generally tend to get super political here. But next Tuesday is a very big day for the United States. January 20th is a day that some of you have been waiting for, some potentially for the last 8 years. The historical significance of Barack Obama being installed as the 44th President of our US of A is huge.

We the People’s Republic of Flying Dog salute the President-elect. For one, he’s broken the mold of your traditional politician. By that, we mean that he doesn’t appear to be snarky. He’s also broken the mold of what you’d expect a politician to be like. At Flying Dog, we’ve also broken the mold of what you expect from a craft brewery, and we expect to keep it up in ‘09. We’re both mavericks. Wait, that was another guy. Our bad.

We’ll be raising a glass to our newest leader on Tuesday, and we’d love it if you toasted him on Tuesday with a pint of Flying Dog, too. If you toast Barack Obama on Tuesday, take a photo and email us at bullshit@flyingdogales.com and we’ll post it to our blog.

The People’s Republic of Flying Dog is now in session. It’s happy hour at Flying Dog Brewery, so here is your latest dose of irreverence. 

The Pilgrims Drank Beer, Keep Up The TraditionThanksgiving - to some, a day to be thankful for all that we have. To others, it’s an excuse to watch football, get drunk and say all the horrible things you’ve wanted to say to your family for the last year. Lucky for you, once you’ve unloaded your alcohol-fueled diatribe, there are always the present-giving holidays of December to make up for what you probably shouldn’t have said in the first place.

So it might not go perfectly with the “fam-damily,” but we want you to be as prepared as possible, in terms of your beverage consumption. We feel that Kerberos Tripel goes splendidly with your Turkey-day meal. Don’t believe us? Check out this video of Matt, our VP of Brewing Operations, talking about Kerberos. And read a blog entry at beerdinners.com about pairing Kerberos with a Thanksgiving sandwich.

Plus, if you have to watch the Lions play, a strong beer will help make the pain go away.

So the Pilgrims probably didn’t drink beer at the first Thanksgiving, mainly because they were concerned about having enough food to survive. If they had the resources, they definitely would have had beer, though. Want to read more about it? Check out beerinfood.com’s (exhaustive) coverage.
Video: GABF Notable Drunk #2 - Zane Lamprey What makes someone a notable drunk in our eyes? Well, if you’re Zane Lamprey, it’s because you get paid to fly to exotic locales, meet new and interesting people from different cultures, and ultimately get drunk with those people. Zane, the host of Three Sheets (a TV show about getting drunk), was gracious enough to grant us an interview while we were at the Great American Beer Festival. He was every bit as nice as you’d imagine from watching him on the television, but we caught him early, so he wasn’t drunk yet. But Zane’s reputation precedes him.

Watch installment #2 of our Notable Drunks series.

Win An Awesome Beer Label BagKat runs our labeler. She also makes stuff - like this cool little bag, completely made out of things she found here at the brewery, including the labels that go on our bottles. Want to win one of these cool little bags? It will make for a splendid holiday gift for that special lady in your life. If that person is a man, it would be an awesome “European Men’s Carry-All”. For more info, check out our blog entry over at flyingdognews.com; it’s simple to enter. Contest ends at high noon EST on 11/30/08.

While you’re there, poke around to see what else we’re doing on the blog, including our ongoing list of Gonzo Gift Ideas for the Holiday season, and other great things we’re posting daily.

Our Twitter Page Gets You A Daily Fix Of What’s Happening At Flying DogThis newsletter only comes out twice a month. If you’re not getting your Flying Dog itch scratched enough, we have a variety of online options for you to hear from us on a more frequent basis. Our favorite these days is the Flying Dog twitter page.

What is this twitter, you say? Well, it’s a place where you can write about whatever you want, but the catch is that you only write 140 characters (the length of a text message). We update lots of times each day about new goings-on at the brewery, contests, and links to people writing about our beer.

It’s free to set up an account, and then you can follow us. Then, on your twitter.com home page, you can see every time we update. And if you respond to a message with @FlyingDog in the tweet, we’ll be sure to see your message. Come converse with us at twitter! You can also just check in on our page every day to see updates, but we really love twitter and love conversating with our loyal Republic of Flying Dog.
What People Are Saying About UsThe links below are mostly
unsolicited outside opinions about our beer and our company from the
media and internet. Read what people are saying about us:

Home Brew Beer stops by the Flying Dog tasting room

Awesome Flying Dog desktop background

Flying Dog makes this list of Wine of the Month (yes, wine)

Gary Busey discusses Hunter S. Thompson

Great 10 minute Dogtoberfest videocast from BeerAmericaTV

Beeradvocate.com - Discussion about our Canis Major mixed 8-pack