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.

We are hosting our 2nd Annual Beer Dinner with Brauns Bar and Grill during the Great American Beer Festival in Denver at 7PM on September 26th, 2009.

The cost of the five course meal is $35.95. We will accept reservations through September 24th. Get your tickets soon, this beer dinner will definitely sell out! For more information head to the GABF Beer Dinner @ Brauns event page.

Buy your tickets online here.

Click here to see a larger image.

The Great American Beer Festival is right around the corner and we are hosting our 2nd Annual FBAG party. We invite all craft beer lovers to come down to the Flying Dog Warehouse (2401 Blake Street) on September 25th from 3-6 for our annual GABF thrown down. The best part….Admission is FREE. Not only are we going to be releasing our 20th Anniversary beer at this year’s FBAG, but this is also a great opportunity for you to enjoy our famous “Gonzo Brats”, listen to live music by The Rob Drabkin Band and hang out with the bad ass Flying Dog crew. So, grab your beer loving friends and stop by, for what is sure to be an awesome time!

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.

Bummed about not being able to make to the 2008 GABF?  Even more bummed about not making it to the 2008 FBAG (Flying Dog, Brats & Gonzo)?  Worry no more.  Our friends at BeerUtopia.com have were there to take in all of the festivities and have posted a couple highlight videos.

So fire up the grill, throw on some brats, bust out some Gonzo Imperial Porter and stare at your computer screen for a bit.  Aside from being in the same room with hundreds of beautiful people, listening to live music and smelling the aroma of beer and brats, you’ll feel like you were there with us.

It’s a long clip, so here are some interviews of interest if you want to fast forward:
Matt Bropphy, Flying Dog VP Brewing Operations at 5:58
Jim Caruso, Flying Dog CEO at 18:00

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.

One of the best things about GABF is that people from all over the world come to Denver to, ahem… talk business. We had the pleasure of meeting our distributors from Sweden and talk some shop over a couple pints. And guess what! We’re HUGE in Sweden!

GABF is to beer, what SXSW is to music or what Mardi Gras is to frat boys.

Needless to say, we’ll have a lot of stuff going on all week.  And even if you’re not able to make the pilgrimage to Denver for the festival, you can keep track of us from the comfort of your computer screen.

But, if you happen to be in Denver:

#1 Come by and do it up FBAG style: We have a feeling this will become an annual tradition.  FBAG (stands for Flying Dog, Brats and Gonzo and just happens to be GABF spelled backwards) is our GABF Weekend kickoff.  It will be your first shot at trying our new Wild Dog Series release, a smoked Double Schwarz (aptly called Dog Schwarz and we’ll also be sampling our new Canis Major Mixed 8-Pack of 7oz bottles!

Since this will be the first stop of the day for most people as they head over to GABF after the party, we’ll also have plenty of food on hand. We’ll be grilling Jim Lutz’s famous Gonzo Brats and pairing some of our other award-winning beers with food from our neighbors at Blake Street Tavern.

Jason and Todd Alstrom from Beer Advocate will be on hand as will the guys from Beer Utopia.  Brant and Eric from Beer Utopia will actually be streaming all of the action on the internet (more details to come) and interviewing anyone who wants to get on camera and wax poetic on beer.

The party will be in our Denver Warehouse at 24th and Blake, just a couple blocks from Coors Field.  The best part: the whole thing is FREE!

#2 We’re also co-hosting a Beer Dinner with DRAFT Magazine at Braun’s on Saturday Night.  The event is sold out, but maybe you can bribe someone into hooking you up with a ticket.

#3 Most importantly, make sure you come by our booth and say hello!

If you’re not in Denver:

Check out our Flying Dog Twitter Feed.  Visual Viceroy, Josh Mishell and Prime Minister of Marketing, Neal Stewart will be posting updates all week.

Log on to our Flickr page.  Josh will also be roaming around Denver and the GABF itself taking photos to share with the world and make you wish you were here.

Log on to this blog! Who knows what we’ll be posting on here!

And if you want even more, check out Josh’s Twitter feed, Neal’s Twitter feed and Neal’s personal blog.

Our photo collection from the 2007 Great American Beer Festival is now available. Check out all the festivities by clicking on the image below and due yourself a favor next year and come join the celebration. The only regret you’ll have is how you treated your liver.

Technorati Tags: Flying Dog, beer, GABF,   brewery, great american beer festival, denver, colorado, beer festival, craft beer

Old Scratch Amber Lager has once again been recognized as one of the best Ambers in America, as it won the Bronze Medal at the Great American Beer Festival.

In the past 4 years, Old Scratch has won two GABF gold medals, a Silver at the World Beer Cup and now a Bronze.