We received more than 400 entries on our Raging Bitch T-shirt Tagline Contest, and have finally come to a decision on the winners. If you are a fan of Flying Dog Brewery on Facebook, you may already know the winners, as we announced them on Monday. For those of you who missed that…

Announcing the winners of our 20th anniversary Raging Bitch Tagline Contest:

Men’s winner: Steve Bode for “She’s mine, get your own Bitch!”
Women’s winner: Telleen Anderson-Lorzano for “If you think I’m a bitch, you should meet my beer!”

We asked Steve and Telleen for their favorite Hunter S. Thompson quotes, too:
Telleen: “Fear is just another word for ignorance”
Steve: “Res ipsa loquitur - Let the good times roll”

Steve and Telleen each win ten Raging Bitch shirts to give out to their friends. Now that we painstakingly picked a winner (it was tough to decide on!), we’ve sent the art to press and these shirts will be available in our online store before Christmas, so save a few bucks to pick some of these up for those lucky folks you’re shopping for!

We’ve been brewing great beer since we opened in Aspen in 1990, and 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of Flying Dog Brewery. So at our FBAG party (during GABF), we officially announced a very special brew commemorating 20 years: Raging Bitch Belgian IPA. To help celebrate this unique brew, we’re holding a t-shirt tag-line contest that you can enter and win.

To help us kick off Raging Bitch, we need two tag-lines to go on our shirts (one for women, and one for men). To enter, leave your answers at our official “Tag This Bitch” thread on Facebook. The contest will end Friday November 13th. Only answers added to the Facebook thread will be eligible to win. Keep your answers somewhat clean (although one of our brewery mottoes *is* “Good beer, no shit”, so…).

A specially hand-picked panel of Flying Dog employees will pick two winners, one for the men’s and one for the women’s shirt tag-lines, and those winners will receive ten raging Bitch shirts (5 men’s, 5 women’s).

Raging Bitch is a delicately hopped IPA augmented with El Diablo yeast (to create that “funky” Belgian-style taste). We also dry hopped this bitch with Amarillo hops, creating a wonderful subtle pine, herbal, and grapefruit citrus aroma.

Initially, Raging Bitch Belgian IPA will be available in very limited edition 750ml bottles sold only in our tasting room, but in early 2010, we’ll also be shipping out Raging Bitch nationwide in 6-packs of 12 ounce bottles.

Last week, we had a Twitter contest in honor of American Craft Beer Week. Each day we asked the twitterverse what craft beer they were drinking. It didn’t have to be Flying Dog beer, we just wanted to show our support for the American craft beer industry. This industry is unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of. Even though the 1500+ craft brewers are all competing against each other for shelf space, tap handles and the like, I think we all realize that we’re united in this fight for better beer.

We got a few hundred responses over the week (thanks to all who participated!), and used a very scientific method of picking a winner. So without further ado, the winner is @freemandaddy5 for his tweet:

@flyingdog #craftbeer I’m drinking the best! http://twitpic.com/5dpls

We’ll be sending @freemandaddy5 some Flying Dog swag! He’s also a die-hard Gonzo enthusiast (just take a look at his twitter homepage).

Flying Dog announced today the release of a new and unique series of beers to be added to the brewery’s already extensive portfolio. The new “Canis Minor Series” will feature three new low-alcohol craft beers.

The four new styles include:

• Hot Dog Habanero Ginger Ale - 0.9% ABV, 2 IBU
• Unicorn Dog Sparkling Barley Wine-style Ale - 1.9% ABV, 4 IBU
• Herberos Belgian-style Root Beer Lager- 1.59% ABV, 7 IBU

“Our new Canis Minor series allows us to open some new distribution channels like the State of Utah and the Food (grocery) channel in Colorado that we previously didn’t have access to since we only brewed ales and lagers over 4% ABV,” said Neal Stewart, Flying Dog’s prime minister of marketing. “We also conducted a lot of research and found that consumers all over the country are looking for unique and great tasting craft beers that are lower in alcohol than mainstream craft beers.”

Flying Dog’s VP of Brewing Operations, Matt Brophy said that the pilot and brewing process was a challenge due to the the peculiar nature of the brews. “When the Marketing Department originally presented this idea to the production team, we thought they were nuts. But the more we piloted the product and test marketed it, the more we became convinced that low gravity might be the next big thing in craft beer,” said Brophy.

All four styles will roll out nationally in June. To celebrate their release, Flying Dog will be hosting a variety of Canis Minor Beer Dinners in major markets around the country.

OK, if you’ve gotten this far and didn’t know it yet, this is an April Fool’s joke. But based on comments, we might be brewing a Habanero Ginger Beer in the near future. Maybe.

Next up in the Beer Radness bracket, we have the big dogs - the Canis Major Series.  Vote for your faves here:

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

Flying Dog is teaming up with DRAFT Magazine for a contest we’re calling “Mug Shots!”

The prizes are good and it’s easy to play.  All you have to do is upload a beer-related photo to DRAFT’s website.  The cool part is that everyone gets to vote on their favorite photos, and the top 10 vote-getters all win some Flying Dog swag and then the three best photos, as chosen by our esteemed staff will win:

1st Place: $100 gift certificate to the Flying Dog Online Store and a 1-year subscription to DRAFT

2nd Place: $50 gift certificate to the Flying Dog Online Store and a 1-year subscription to DRAFT

3rd Place: $25 gift certificate to the Flying Dog Online Store and a 1-year subscription to DRAFT

So bust out your camera, start snapping photos and tell your friends to vote for your photo!  Hopefully your photos are much happier than this one:

For more details go to http://draftmag.com/mugshots

A couple weeks back as we neared our 2000th Twitter follower, we announced a contest.  We would reward the 2000th @flyingdog follower with a prize and then also randomly choose 10 of our first 2000 followers to receive a prize as well.

Our 2000th Twitter follower was @drewdockery from Bloomington, IL - Congrats Drew!

Our 10 other prize winners are:

@stoutgirl

@fauxhammer

@billpet

@brianherbert

@brewed4thought

@daria

@palm1891

@notoriousBLG

@shawnmurphy

@thanksbrah

Congrats to all of our winners.  If you are a winner, send us your address, t-shirt size and favorite Flying Dog beer style as a direct message on twitter and we’ll send your prize out to you.  Want to know what the prize is?  It’s a Flying Dog t-shirt!

17 syllables.

5.

7.

5.

That’s Haiku.  And we’re having a Twitter Haiku contest.  Here’s how to participate:

1. Write a Flying Dog Haiku. “What’s a Flying Dog Haiku,” you ask? That’s for you to decide and us to judge.
2. Post it on twitter with “@flyingdog” at the beginning. the @flyingdog is not part of your haiku.
3. Do it before Noon on Feb 18, 2009.
4. The top 5 haikus will be chosen by our esteemed panel of Neal Stewart (Prime Minister of Marketing/@nealstewart), Josh Mishell (Visual Viceroy/@joshmishell),  Jim Caruso (Flying Dog CEO), Stephanie Kerchner (PR and Events Ninja/@stephkerchner) and maybe a few more people.
5. Yes, it should be creative.
6. Yes, we like to see our name in lights, so including something about Flying Dog earns brownie points with the judges.  Maybe something about Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman - you get the point.  Go to our website for some creative motivation.
7. The top 5 Twitter Haikus will receive $50 gift certificate to our online store.
8. Must be 21 to enter and/or win.
9. All entries must be posted to Twitter.com by NOON, Feb 18.
10. The judges decision is final.  Believe us, they’re not screwing around.

And yes, this contest was inspired by Beer Haiku Daily.

This is why we love our Flying Dog drinkers: you’re always the first to compliment the good, but also the first to point it out when we screw up.

We posted on Twitter today that we are going to award a prize to our 2000th Twitter follower.  Immediately, the lighthearted backlash began:

• Sigafoos @flyingdog What are you, Apple, with your punishing early adopters? I keed, I keed. But give me cool stuff too
• deege @flyingdog So you’re saying I followed too early?
• naomimimi @flyingdog so can i unfollow then follow you again?

So, here is the new contest:

1. Yes, we are still going to award a prize to our 2000th follower.
2. BUT, we are also going to draw 10 names from our first 2000 followers and give out even cooler prizes.  So, don’t unfollow us and try to be the 2000th follower because you might get locked out of the whole thing altogether.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.  That’s why we do this whole Twitter thing.  We love talking to everyone.  And, we need someone to straighten our ass out everyonce in a while.