Drink With The Wench

The Scary Future of Dogfish Head Brewery

Caught your eye, didn’t I? Well, hate to break it to you, but this post is not “real.”

Dogfish Head recently released a very entertaining video on their website and YouTube channel called ‘Robot Brewery Tour’. In a tasteful yet snide way, this satirical video takes a jab at both the corporate beer industry and American dependence on technology. “There is no more analogue beer for the Digital Age, there’s only digital beer now for the Digital Age.”

Official Announcement From Dogfish Head:

‘Robot Brewery Tour,’ a short film starring Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione and actor/musician Will Oldham premiered at the 2010 Off-Centered Film Fest at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas on Saturday, April 17th.

This film stars the musician and actor Will Oldham as a reporter and brewery founder Sam Calagione as a robot. It’s a brewery tour film wrapped around a dystopian vision of a near future in which robots have taken over Dogfish Head and reduced our diverse and colorful American craft brewing landscape to a monochromatic world of a single commoditized generic beer. Scary stuff!

This story almost came to life here in the U.S. during the 1970s until small, independent craft breweries, like Dogfish Head and so many others, revitalized the domestic beer scene.

Will Oldham is a Kentucky-based singer, musician and actor who has performed under a few variations of the Palace name, including Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, and simply Palace. He is currently touring under the Bonnie Prince Billy moniker and has performed at Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats at least twice in the past decade – most recently in April of 2010 when ‘Robot Brewery Tour’ was shot on location at Dogfish’s Milton, Delaware brewery. Want to read more about Will? Check out this article from The New Yorker.

If you have 11 spare minutes on your hands today, check out the following (scary, yet humorous) video:

Robot Brewery Tour credits:

Mr. Robot – Sam Calagione
Jonathan Smart – Will Oldham
The Amazing & Talented Dogfish Coworkers – Themselves
Director – Ryan Collerd
Director of Photography – Gabe DeLoach
Sound – Kirsten Fuoti
Editors – Gabe DeLoach & Ryan Collerd
Animation – Scott Lunny
Special Effects – David Ariew