DuClaw Brewing Company

A couple of days ago we shipped our Naked Fish 22oz bottles to our Maryland distributor. And next week, they will be heading to our Virginia distributor. That is right, this little brewery from Bel Air is selling beer in Virginia, but that is not what this blog post is about.

For those of you who don’t know, Naked Fish is a chocolate raspberry stout.  We make it with chocolate raspberry coffee in the mash, which is a pretty cool way to get a fruit and chocolate flavor.  Naked Fish has been in our lineup for years; usually released in February for Valentine’s Day.  Last year, we didn’t brew it. Wow, did we make a mistake. People really missed it. Enough so that we not only brewed it this year, but we bottled it. But that is not really even the point of this post.

Back in 1998, I had just recently let go my brewmaster and I had my roommate from college (Marc Tewey of Brimstone fame) brewing for me temporarily. We had sponsored a homebrew contest, and I was planning on meeting with the winner to discuss his beer that won.  Marc knew the winner and told him to bring some other samples in of his beer for me to try. The homebrew winner brought 3 different samples. All were very, very good.  But, one was a Chocolate Raspberry Porter, that was just delicious. When I asked him what type of chocolate did he use to create the flavor, he floored me with “No chocolate, no raspberry. It’s all from the coffee that I use in the brew.”

Well, if you haven’t guessed it, the winner of the contest was Jim Wagner (our brewmaster). Twenty minutes after the conversations started, I offered him the job as brewmaster. And as the say, the rest was history…..