Esquire's new beer show features Philly
"Brew Dogs" visits a different American beer town, celebrate craft beers and create their own locally inspired draft. The Philly episode is up for Oct. 8.
Someone brewed a beer that's DNA digitally encoded with 328 million copies of the Declaration of Independence?
Neat idea. There are about 328 million people in America, and what is more American than beer?
But more important: Why would you do it?
All in the name of TV.
The new Esquire Network, the guy-centric cable channel inspired by the magazine and backed by NBCUniversal, has a show called Brew Dogs.
Its stars, James Watt and Martin Dickie, own Scotland's BrewDog brewery. In each hour-long show, they visit a different American beer town, celebrate craft beers and create their own locally inspired draft.
The Philly episode - which stars Victory Brewing - is up for 10 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8. (Note: Date was changed.)
It was shot in July with a few "pickups" last month. Cameras rolled during the July 4 parade in Pottstown, where the Declaration beer was brewed and released.
The idea, says executive producer Jared Cotton, was to "try and make the most American beer ever brewed. We wanted to take the idea of a colonial recreation beer to a whole new level by infusing as much Americana into it as we possibly could."
"Beer is one of the building blocks of civilization, the Declaration of Independence is one of the key building blocks of our country and DNA is the building block of life. Declaration Nation Ale. We thought it all fit," he said, declining to say if anyone actually drinks this DNA-infused beer. (The question is answered in the show.)
"As much as the show is about brewing beer in fun, challenging and often ridiculous ways, it's also a way for us to show off craft beer culture and how it fits in to the cities that we visit," Cotton said.
Brew Dogs cameras visited such stops as Barcade, Eulogy, Farmers' Cabinet, Kraftwork and Monk's because "you can't talk about craft beer in Philly without talking about places like that," he said.
Each episode includes a food stop. Brew Dogs worked with Federal Donuts to create doughnuts that not only used beer in the glaze but were designed to be paired with that same beer as well. Watt and Dickie made a grapefruit brown sugar doughnut that used Sly Fox IPA and a double chocolate cherry doughnut that used Lancaster Brewing Milk Stout.