Last Saturday’s 2010 World Beer Cup became the world’s largest commercial beer competition with 3,330 beers entered by 642 breweries in 90 beer style categories.

No stranger to the World Beer Cup, our Vintage 2007 Gonzo Imperial Porter received a Silver Medal in the Aged Beer category. (In 2008, it won a Gold Medal in the American-Style Imperial Stout category.)

Delicious in all forms, as Gonzo Imperial Porter ages, the roasted, coffee notes change to smooth chocolate and toffee flavors, which softens the hop bite. Although alcohol notes are not noticeable in newly packaged Gonzo, they become even less as it ages.

Every dog has its day. But on September 26th, 2009 at The Great American Beer Festival, Flying Dog Brewery had one of our best days. Ever. With 3,308 beers entered by 495 breweries, Flying Dog took home gold medals for our Dogtoberfest Marzen, Gonzo Imperial Porter, 2007 Vintage Horn Dog Barley Wine and a silver medal for whiskey-barrel-aged Gonzo Imperial Porter.
And now, for the grand finale (get ready with the drum-roll sound effect), we won “2009 Mid-Size Brewing Company of the Year!” This prestigious award is based on the number of medals won and type of medals during this year’s Great American Beer Festival. The mid-sized brewery category included all breweries that produce between 15,000 and 2,000,000 barrels of beer, which includes 76 breweries.
We’re deeply honored to receive this award, and love getting the recognition for something we and our wonderful fans (that means you) already know: that Flying Dog Brewery is one of the hardest working, hardest playing breweries out there. We’d also like to thank the presenting sponsor, Crosby & Baker Ltd.

So go out and celebrate with us by drinking some award-winning Flying Dog beer! Cheers!

And remember: When you’re the best around, nothing’s gonna ever keep you down.

This Friday and Saturday is the World Expo of Beer, which is the largest beer sampling event in Michigan. We’ll be pouring beer at the event, which is at Heritage Park in Frankenmuth, Michigan. One of the cool parts of this festival is that the participating breweries submit beers for competitive judging in advance, and the results of that competition come in before the event. It’s really cool that you can see who wins, and then go drink their beer while you’re there.

Plus it’s cool as hell, because Flying Dog Brewery kicked some ass in the competition.

• Gonzo Imperial Porter: 1st place, Porter Division
• Old Scratch Amber Lager: 2nd place, Amber Hybrid Division
• In-Heat Wheat Hefeweizen: 2nd place, German Wheat/Rye Division

Here’s the entire list of winners.

We received word yesterday from “Down Under” that Flying Dog Brewery won THREE Australian International Beer Awards!  Just another step toward world domination.

Here’s what we won:

Gonzo Imperial Porter                   GOLD                    Stout Packaged – Imperial

Old Scratch Amber Lager              SILVER                  Other eg Amber, Bock, Marzen, Vienna

Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale        BRONZE               American Style Pale Ale

Cheers, mate!

Twitter is good fun,

We had a haiku contest,

Now back to drinking.

Here are the winners of our 1st Twitter Contest.  Thanks to everyone who played! We had a lot of great entries.  Everyone below (named by Twitter handle) wins a $50 Gift Certificate to our online store.  If you’re a winner send us a direct message for details on your prize.

@RedheadWriting  Drinking Flying Dog/Makes boys touch my breast-es-ses/So I drink it lots.

@BeerHaikuDaily Best night of my life, Drinking Old Scratch with friends… Wait, What’s your name again?

@BuddyJesus My friends steal my beer / so I must hide my Tire Bite. / It’s Good Beer, No Shit

@catlprod11  Snake Dog IPA Buy the ticket, take the ride. Taste buds tingle. Bliss.

@circleskirt Our Flying Dog Beer, Wins best in taste, not in show, Take that, Westminster

We’ll have more on this in our newsletter, but we wanted to let everyone know that Flying Dog Brewery once again picked up some medals at the 2008 Great American Beer Fest. Dogtoberfest Märzen is the proud owner of a Gold Medal, and Old Scratch Amber Lager is a Silver Medalist. We’re very excited to get this recognition, and Scratch keeps on winning medals left and right (it also was a Silver Award winner at this year’s World Beer Cup).

Winning medals isn’t easy. We want to give a big shout out to our entire production team. It truly is a team effort on this shit, from the Brewers to the Cellarmen to the Packaging department to Quality Control. Way to make us look good, guys!

But really what makes us happy is knowing that our consumers are happy with our award-winning ales. We’re doing this to make you people happy.

Flying Dog Brewery was one of only a handful of American brewers to take home a medal in the recent Stockholm Beer and Whiskey Festival. Snake Dog IPA received the Silver medal in the Ale category proving once again, Flying Dog’s world dominance is inevitable. Give into the People’s Republic of Flying Dog!

Technorati Tags: Flying Dog, Snake Dog, IPA, Stockholm Beer and Whiskey, Awards

Whether it is Yahtzee, pen twirling, drinking, or paper airplane making, cup stacking, or fast forwarding through TV commercials on TiVo (my specialty) - everyone is #1 at something.  We just happen to be #1 in a category that people actually care about- Top Breweries!

Beer Quest 2008 recently took a tour around the country and ranked their favorite beers and breweries.  Per the list below, we came out on top.  Click here or on the image below to take in our #1 ranking in all of its glory.

Technorati Tags: brewery, ranking, beer quest, 2008, craft, brew, flying dog, tour

The Frederick Flying Dogs Semi-Pro baseball team recently celebrated their 2008 league championship. After going down 2-0 in the best of 5 series, they used a little old fashion voodoo magic to help seal the deal and pull out victory. Below is the story of how Tire Bite helped bring home the championship from team manager Nick Collingham.

“After we lost game 2, a handful of us sat around drinking some beers after the other team had left.  We figured we had to do something to change our luck. We weren’t hitting and just lost with our ace on the hill even though he allowed only 2 runs. So, we buried a full Flying Dog beer (Tire Bite) label up in the pitcher’s mound right behind the pitching rubber at their field.  We have not lost since.  Coincidence??????????”

CONGRATS BOYS!

Fellow members of the People’s Republic of Flying Dog, I bring good tidings. This past weekend, the bi-yearly World Beer Cup was held in San Diego  Just under 3,000 beers from around the world were entered in 91 categories, and Flying Dog Brewery was recognized with two medals:

Gonzo Imperial Porter - Gold Medal, Imperial Stout Category
Old Scratch Amber Lager - Silver Medal, Amber Lager Category

Our Wild Goose Brewery also received a Gold Medal in the English Style IPA category for Wild Goose IPA.

Here’s a picture of our Production Team, Matt Brophy, Bob Malone and Mark Matovich with the awards.  The guy not holding an award is from the Marketing Dept and just trying to take some of the glory.

We’re pleased as punch for the recognition, and are honored to win such prestigious awards. We’d also like to thank you, our loyal drinkers, for lapping up Flying Dog ales for the last 18 years. We couldn’t be where we are today without you guys (and gals).

Technorati Tags: world beer cup, flying dog, craft brewers conference, awards, gonzo imperial porter, old scratch