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.

DC Craft Beer Week Is Coming Up Fast

Washington, DC is a lot of things. To some, it’s the capital of democracy and freedom. To others, it’s a heaping pile of garbage, showcasing the Burearacracy and pork-barrel spending of massive governments who have lobbyists in their back pockets.

To us, it’s a great place to drink beer, all the while questioning anything and everything, HST-style (Hunter lived in DC while he was covering the 1972 Presidential election). Plus it’s in our backyard, being about an hour from our Frederick, Maryland brewery.

With that in mind, we’d like to tell you all about DC Craft Beer Week. We’ve got a plethora of events happening next week.

Make sure you check out our DC Tweetup event on the 27th. We’ll be giving away some awesome shit, and the first 50 to show up get a free pint glass. Plus, you can meet my boss. Make sure to tell him what an amazing job I’m doing.

Monday, May 25
• Craft Beer Trivia Night - 7PM @ Fado - 808 7th St NW.

Tuesday, May 26
• Meet the Flying Dog Brewers - 7PM @ the Brickskeller - 1523 22nd St NW. Drink a wide range of our more experimental and aggressive brews, like Dog Schwarz, our über-limited Belgian IPA, Barrel-Aged Gonzo Imperial Porter (plus more).
• SAVOR sampling - 6:30-9:30 @ RFD - 810 7th Street NW. Join Flying Dog and 12 other breweries for a sampling.

Wednesday, May 27
• DC Tweetup - 6PM @ Luna Grill & Diner, 1301 Connecticut Ave NW (DuPont Circle). We’re having a Tweetup in DC at Luna Grill and Diner on May 27 at 6pm. Everyone who comes to the Tweetup will get one complimentary Flying Dog beer and be registered to win some sweet Flying Dog Swag. We’ll even throw in a free Flying Dog Pint Glass for the first 50 people through the door!
• Capitol Hill Craft Beer Bar Tour - 6PM, starting @ Hawk ‘n Dove, 329 Pennsylvania Ave SE.

Thursday, May 28
• Flying Dog Promo Night - 6-9PM @ Bourbon in Glover Park - 2348 Wisconsin Ave NW.
• Meet the Brewers & Steal the Pint Glass - 4-9PM @ RFD - 810 7th Street NW. 4-7 is Doggie Drafts Happy Hour, and 7-9 Meet the Flying Dog Brewers & FD steal the pints
• Flying Dog Night at Reef - 5-Close @ The Reef, 244618th St NW, Adams Morgan. Happy Hour pricing on Flying Dog. A great bar with great food and an amazing rooftop patio.

Friday, May 29
• Roundtable Discussion with Craft Brewers - 9PM @ Pizzeria Paradiso, 3282 M St NW. End of the week Meet & Greet! Roundtable Discussion, Flying Dog Firkin on hand.

Saturday, May 30
• SAVOR Craft Beer Festival - 7:30-11PM @ National Building Museum, 401 F Street NW. The second year of the Brewer’s Association Festival geared around pairing great craft beer with great food.

Get To Know Gonzo #6: This Time In Stunning 1970s Gonzovision!

Yes, yes. I know I said I was going to bring you an interview with Ralph Steadman. Well, that didn’t exactly work out, but maybe next time we can bring it to you. Plus Hunter S. Thompson blew deadlines all the time. So this week, we’re bringing you a 30 year-old classic.


Fear & Loathing in Gonzovision was a BBC Documentary produced in 1978 chronicling Ralph Steadman & Hunter S Thompson. It’s about 54 minutes long, and you can crack open a Gonzo Imperial Porter and stream it online today while you’re at work. Just make sure to put some headphones on, and don’t blame us if you get busted.

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3

I think we may have brought this to you in a previous newsletter a few years back, but it’s so amazing that you’ll want to watch it again. But there’s going to be a quiz next newsletter, so pay attention.

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We’ll be bringing you something Gonzo-themed from the world each time the newsletter comes out. Have a link to send us? Email it to joshm {at} flyingdogales {dot} com.

Ahoy, Matey! Bringing The Fear & Loathing Back To Sailing Races

One of the storied stories in the storybook history of the Hunter S. Thompson / Ralph Steaman collaboration is the time they went to cover the America’s Cup Race. If you read our newsletter on March 11, you’ve read about this incident.

So, you may be asking, how are we bringing back this form of immersive sailing reporting? A bunch of folks from the Brewery took the afternoon off and cruised down to scenic Annapolis, Maryland last Wednesday to participate in the Woodwind Wednesday Night Sailing Races.

The good news: We came in second in our class.
The bad news: There were two boats racing in our class.

But there’s more good news. We wore pirate patches and flew the Flying Dog flag prominently, instilling fear (and loathing) among our competitors, who probably thought we’d hijack their vessel if we caught up to them. Which is some damn good motivation to stay in the lead. From the photos, it seems like people were just hanging out and drinking beer the whole time. No wonder we lost!

Check out more photos here. Also, I wasn’t really sure how to fit this in, but here’s my favorite movie quote about sailboats.

Cheers! Until next time,
     -Josh

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.

Celebrate El Seis De Mayo with Flying Dog Brewery

It’s El Seis de Mayo today. We’re assuming that you, the faithful People’s Republic of Flying Dog, are the type who don’t necessarily need an excuse to go out on a Tuesday to get shit-faced. But having Cinco De Mayo as an excuse helps explain your lack of productivity the next day at work. Like many of you, we at Flying Dog are nursing hangovers, too. But it’s ok, because we are professionals.

If you didn’t get the chance to celebrate last night, crack open a Doggie Style tonight (or if you’re really slick or adventurous, ask for it “a lo perrito“) to celebrate. After all, today is Hump Day (thus making Doggie Style the natural choice). So we’ve all got that going for us, which is nice.

Get To Know Gonzo #5:
Read more about Ralph Steadman

Last time we reintroduced you to our artist extraordinaire Ralph Steadman. Plus, since it was the Kentucky Derby last weekend, it only makes sense to talk more about Ralph. As you might recall, the 1970 Derby marked the first collaboration between gonzo co-conspirators Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson. Here are some cool links that we recently found online about Ralph. Expect an interview with Ralph next time around, folks.

Ralph wrote the foreword to Jerelle Kraus’ new book about the New York Times’ Op-Ed Cartoons called “All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t): Inside the New York Times Op-Ed Page”. Read about the book here, buy it here.

• Here’s a good Salon.com interview with Ralph from 2000 - yes, all the way from back ’round the turn-of-the-century.

• It’s hard to talk about the art of Ralph Steadman without talking about Hunter S. Thompson, and vice versa. Here’s a Washington Post book review of “Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson” where Ralph is name-dropped liberally.

We’ll be bringing you something Gonzo-themed from the world each time the newsletter comes out. Have a link to send us? Email it to joshm {at} flyingdogales {dot} com.

George Stranahan Relaunches His Website

These must be the days of new websites. George Stranahan, if you didn’t already know, is the benevolent founder of Flying Dog Brewery. What you also might not know is that George is a prolific photographer, writer, publisher, and philanthropist.



George recently redesigned his personal website. Take a look around to see what George is all about. Recommended “must-read” sections:
• George’s Phlog (Photography Blog) is regularly updated. Check out George’s wonderful photographs, as well as the stories that accompany them.

• The “Chapters” section: Two years worth of blog entries give people an idea of what George is like, with entry titles like “One Hell of a Life“, “How to Suck Eggs“, and “Authority on Lunacy“.

So dig deep into our founder’s website, and come away having a better idea of what George Stranahan is all about.

Meet the Pack: Bob Malone Brews Your Beer

Bob Malone is our Head Brewer. We got an email after the last newsletter from someone purporting to be his friend, asking why we didn’t showcase Bob more. We want you to know that we’re listening when you’re speaking. So by reader request, here’s a Q&A with Mr. Malone.

• Who are you and what do you do??

I’m the grumpy old man that walks around and yells at people. I am the slave to the yeast, I live to keep it happy. My job description is this: It varies anywhere from “wonderful” to a “serious clusterfuck”. The only thing I can say about a typical day is that it isn’t going to be typical.

• Why does your picture on our employee page make you look like a dog? You’re not that hairy, right?

The world is full of pictures of ugly middle-aged men; why not put a little beauty in the world? That and the fact that I have no hair, so I wanted to look good.

• When did you realize that you wanted to brew beer for a living?

When I was 28 years old, having just moved back from Japan and interviewing for jobs in companies where the people didn’t look happy. I had just started home brewing and realized I needed to turn pro to support my habit. Oh…sorry, I meant “hobby”.

• Where else have you worked?

Have boots, will travel. I have worked in the following breweries: The Wild, Wild West Gambling Hall and Brewery, Rogue Ales, Star Brewing,
Echigo Beer, Otaru Beer, Backcountry Brewery, Big Buck Brewery, Copper Canyon, and the Wild Goose Brewery.

• What was working and living in Japan like?

Living in Japan was good, initially a lot of frustrations but most of those stemmed from not understanding the culture or speaking the language. The longer I was there, the less that became an issue, and the food is great. Working in Japan was a very interesting deal, things are done differently there - not better or worse, but certainly different. I learned how they were into consensus building but not really. It was a true education in every sense of the word.

• What do you like best about working for Flying Dog Brewery?

Dealing with all the people who help make me look like less of a whack-job and being able to make something as opposed to tearing something down. The act of making is far more challenging than the act of destruction. And I make beer, HELLO!

• What advice do you have for homebrewers who are hoping to turn their passion into a career?

Make sure your significant other makes a good living and completely understands that brewing is a lot of work, it has to be a labor of love or you are wasting your time.

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Want to learn more about one of the Flying Dog employees? Check out our Flying Dog Mutts page, and shoot us an email at bullshit@flyingdogales.com and ask! We’ll see what we can do.

Cheers! Until next time,
-Josh

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.

Something Old, Something New. Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

We’re heading into wedding season, people. People getting married left and right, with about half of those happy people realizing the horrible error in their reasoning and backing out of that train wreck of a relationship (much to the delight of their lawyers). To offset the fact that you’ve got a monkey suit on, make sure your engaged couple are stocking up on Flying Dog brews for the open bar reception.

Flying Dog Brewery has a present for everyone, not just those folks who are registered at AsSeenOnTV.com.

Something Old: Our old website was getting a little dated looking.
Something New: Check out our new website at flyingdogales.com.

Something Borrowed: We borrowed your car last weekend; probably should have told you beforehand. Our bad.
Something Blue: Oh yeah, that blue scratch on the side of your Gremlin? Um, it was like that when I borrowed it. Seriously. Yeah, it was definitely scratched before I went joyriding to every establishment within the city limits where lovely ladies take off their clothes for money.

We’d love for you to check out our new website. We’ve added a lot more of our social media activity directly into our homepage. You can now just check out our homepage to see what we’re tweeting and blogging about. We want to give you a more full picture about what we’re up to. As always, we still have information about our award-winning ales, along with upcoming events, contests, videos, and all other things related to Flying Dog.

Have feedback? Click on the feedback button on the left of our site to let us know what you like, or how we can do better. We want to hear from you.

Get To Know Gonzo #4: Ralph Steadman = Total Bad Ass

One of the reasons we are where we are today is because of our amazing label artist, Ralph Steadman. Ralph is a world-renowned artist whose collaboration with Hunter S. Thompson is the stuff of legend. Ralph is so awesome, that his art was even (lovingly) ripped off by a certain animated sitcom.

So go check out Ralph’s website at RalphSteadman.com and see what he’s up to. Notably, Ralph just wrote and illustrated a children’s book called Garibaldi’s Biscuits. We’ll have more on our favorite artist in the next newsletter. But for now, read what you can about Ralph, one of the most influential artists of the last 50 years.

Don’t forget to look at Ralph’s Art of the Week (at the bottom), this week features something he recently sent us.

We’ll be bringing you something Gonzo-themed from the world each time the newsletter comes out. Have a link to send us? Email it to joshm {at} flyingdogales {dot} com.

Show Your Patriotism During American Craft Beer Week By Drinking Our Beer

America: The brewing revolution needs your help. Flying Dog Brewery and you, our scores of citizens of the People’s Republic of Flying Dog, can make a difference in the brewing world. You can do this by promoting the concept of drinking beer owned by Americans and produced in the good ol’ US of A. There is no better time to show your friends that you’re an American Craft Beer drinker than during American Craft Beer Week (May 11-17, 2009).

We will be showing our support in a variety of ways. First, each day that week, we’ll be asking our Twitter followers about what American Craft Beer they’re drinking (and using the hashtag #craftbeer). Everyone who replies to us with the beer they’re drinking (and the #craftbeer hashtag) will be entered into a contest to win some free Flying Dog shit.

If you’re around Frederick, MD on May 16th, we’ll pick someone randomly from our Saturday tour as the big winner of some free shit from our store. It’s always a good idea to come to our 50,000 square foot brewery for a tour, but winning free shit always makes things better, no?

Become a fan of American Craft Beer Week on Facebook to show your support for an industry that we’ll never be outsourcing.

We Twitter Tasted Live, Did You?

The Flying Dog edition of Twitter Taste Live happened last Saturday. Were you one of the people who drank our Canis Major series of beers with us? We had a wonderful turnout, with lots of people tweeting about how awesome our beers are. CEO Jim Caruso and VP of Brewing Matt Brophy were on hand to drink beer with our fans who tweet.

Interested in seeing what you missed? Scroll through 15 pages of tweets about what people have to say about our Canis Major brews. We had fun and are looking forward to doing something like this in the future for those of you who missed out.

Cheers! Until next time,
     -Josh