New Del. Beer To Be Celebrated At Concert

One of the first release parties in the country for Dogfish’s new collaboration with Grateful Dead in the form of a new beer – American Beauty – will be held Wednesday night at the Queen with Philadelphia-based Dead tribute act Box of Rain performing on the Queen’s main downstairs stage.

Box of Rain will be performing many of the tracks from the beer’s namesake, the “American Beauty” album that the Dead released in 1970 boasting some of the band’s biggest hits, like “Friend of the Devil,” ‘‘Ripple” and “Truckin’.” It’s especially appropriate considering that the album kicks off with the song “Box of Rain.”

Wilmington-based Box of Rain drummer Tim Kelly says the band has been busy learning a few extra songs from the album, including deep cuts like “Operator,” in preparation for a gig that combines three of his loves: Dogfish Head, the Dead and the Queen, where he has performed multiple times with different acts.

“For all these things to come together – it makes it a cool, special gig for me,” Kelly says. “The only thing I could think of to make it better is if they had Dogfish girls, but I don’t think they have those yet.”

Music and Dogfish have long been intertwined, whether it’s due to the live (and usually free) original concerts held weekly at the brewpub or the growing roster of legendary musicians and their estates who have teamed up with the Milton brewery to create their own distinctive beers.

There has been Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Robert Johnson’s tribute Hellhound On My Ale and Pearl Jam’s Faithfull Ale, which had its own release party at the Queen in 2011, pairing the new beer with a screening of director Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam documentary, “Pearly Jam Twenty.”

The American Beauty beer, an imperial pale ale clocking in at a respectable 9 percent ABV, was made with an all-American blend of malts, hops and granola.

That’s right, granola.

Dogfish created a contest to find the best suggestion for a Dead-themed ingredient and Thomas Butler of California beat out 1,500 others with his submission asking for granola, reminiscing about his first Dead show at the age of 9 when his father helped him over a fence to sneak into a concert in Oklahoma City.

Dogfish’s brewers chose an organic granola from Grizzlies Brand in Eugene, Ore., with its light almond flavor and touch of orange-blossom honey. As you might imagine, some entries had to be disqualified due to the fact that some of the submitted ingredients are, well, illegal. Marijuana and mushrooms were among the more popular submissions that had to be axed.

Tickets for Wednesday’s Queen/Dogfish tag-team are $3. The beer will be available for sale on draft ($7) or in 750-ml bottles ($12) at the Queen, which has the state’s largest allotment of the limited, in-demand brew, says Chris Constable, the Queen’s food and beverage manager.

Other than Dogfish employees at the Rehoboth brewpub wearing tie-dye and the Dead playing over the stereo system earlier this week on the beer’s official release date, the Queen event is the first official release party for the beer in Delaware.

Other parties include Tuesday’s event at Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, Calif. and Oct. 22 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas, Tex.; Ashburn, Va.; Denver, Colo.; and Yonkers, N.Y., with Dogfish founder Sam Calagione in attendance.

Calagione, whose first Dead show was with his wife, Mariah, in the summer of 1991, will not be at the Queen, but Mike Contreras, Dogfish’s Delmarva regional sales manager, will be on hand to answer questions.

“The music series beers are the most obvious and easiest beers to build events like these around,” Contreras says. “Hopefully, it bring a lot of Deadheads and beer nerds ou