Fermentation Engastration bottle in front of treehouse

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery & Atlas Obscura’s Gastro Obscura Release the 'Turducken' of the Beer World

Monday, May 09, 2022

A ‘Turducken’ of the beer world … you can’t be serious. Oh, but we are! We’ve joined forces with our friends at Atlas Obscura’s food and drink vertical, Gastro Obscura, to launch a limited-edition, first-of-its-kind craft beer experiment: Fermentation Engastration. Unlike anything you’ve ever tasted, Fermentation Engastration draws inspiration from a collection of complex fermented beverages – a rose-scented sake, a Mid-Atlantic honey and date mead, a bittersweet hard cider, a fruity Muscat wine and a rustic farmhouse ale. The result? One eccentric, incomparable beverage that can only be described as, well, the ‘Turducken’ of the beer world.

Fermentation Engastration is brewed with a boatload of off-centered culinary ingredients, including barley, spelt, muscat grape juice concentrate, flaked rice, apple juice concentrate, honey rice syrup, date syrup, yeast, hops and rose petals. On the nose, this brewing innovation is bursting with classic spicy phenols, while the tasting experience packs an explosion of fruit character balanced by a slight sweetness. With only 1,000 (500ml) bottles made, Fermentation Engastration released at our Milton brewery on Friday, May 6 just in time for our annual Weekend of Compelling Ales & Spirits … BUT … just in case you weren’t able to join us this past weekend, we’re excited to share that Fermentation Engastration will be available in select U.S. states* from coast to coast via GiveThemBeer.com, beginning Friday, May 13, at 9 a.m. EST, while supplies last!

“Here at Dogfish Head, we’ve never been afraid to go against the grain with experimenting with unique, high quality culinary ingredients in our beers,” says Dogfish Head founder & brewer Sam Calagione. “As brewers and ‘mad scientists’ of sorts, it’s always been a fascination of ours to deconstruct, reimagine and reassemble how drinkers experience each sip of a new beer. Our latest example of that thinking is Fermentation Engastration, kind of like the ‘turducken’ of beer, which artfully melds a whole myriad of complex ideas and brewing concepts into one multi-layered drinking event.”

With Gastro Obscura as our featured guest at this past weekend’s Weekend of Compelling Ales & Spirits, Fermentation Engastration is the perfect mash-up for this incredible partnership. For us, Fermentation Engastration is a liquid representation of our off-centered ethos, giving a loving nod to our history of pushing the boundaries of craft beer.

Similarly, Gastro Obscura encourages those with daring palettes to explore the world and its many wonders through the lens of food and drink. By sharing stories, hosting experiences and leading worldwide trips, Gastro Obscura strives to open folks’ minds (and stomachs) to new and exciting culinary experiences by unlocking their inner senses of wonder and curiosity.

“The curious minds at Atlas Obscura and Dogfish Head share a common obsession with searching for the unusual in food and drink,” said Warren Webster, Atlas Obscura CEO. “We knew that anything could happen if we teamed up with Dogfish Head, and sure enough we found magic in Fermentation Engastration. Like our partnership itself, this beer is proof that bringing together unexpected ingredients can yield wonderful results.”

Order your bottle of Fermentation Engastration beginning Friday, May 13 - click here!