Dogfish Head & The Grateful Dead: Off-Centered Ingredients With a Real-World Impact

From Dogfish Head:

Here at Dogfish Head, we’ve always believed beer should do more than taste good … it should do good, too. So, when we set out to bring some collaborative brews with our pals the Grateful Dead to life, we asked ourselves: how can we push the creative envelope and tread a little lighter on the planet?

Enter two seriously cool grains: Kernza® and Fonio. They’re a little off-centered and a little unexpected … but they’re making a real difference from the ground to your glass.

Kernza®: A grain with deep roots … literally!

If you’ve cracked open a Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale, you’ve already tasted Kernza® in action.

Supplied by Sustain-A-Grain, Kernza® isn’t your typical brewing grain. This perennial wheatgrass developed by The Land Institute sticks around year after year, building healthier soil and capturing carbon from the atmosphere along the way. Translation: it’s doing some heavy lifting before it even gets to the brewhouse.

And the impact is real! In 2025, the first year that Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale hit taps and shelves:

• We used 74,404 lbs of Kernza® grains
• Which supported 248 acres of U.S. farmland dedicated to additional sustainable grain-growing practices
• Now here’s where it gets extra heady (in a good way) … swapping just a small portion of traditional barley for Kernza grain helped us avoid a whopping ~49,000 kg of carbon emissions. Proof that small tweaks in our grain bill can make a big impact!

All that goodness, packed into a beer that’s juicy, hazy, and ready for wherever the music takes you.

Fonio: The tiny grain with a big groove

Now let’s talk about the new kid on the beer list: Grateful Dead Citrus Daydream Lager.

This citrusy lager features fonio, an ancient grain from West Africa that’s been feeding communities for thousands of years … and it’s just starting to find its groove in modern brewing.

Why fonio? Because it’s kind of a rockstar in its own right. Provided by Yolélé, fonio is one of the world’s oldest cultivated grains that’s prized for thriving where other crops tap out. This tiny ancient grain grows fast, and it needs very little water … in fact, it’s drought tolerant and rain fed, meaning no irrigation is used during cultivation even though it grows in an arid geography. Fonio also flourishes in poor soil conditions without heavy fertilizers or intensive farming, and the only fertilizer used with fonio is organic compost. Not to mention, it’s grown in rotation with other crops and grazing as part of a regenerative farming system. All that adds up to one seriously low‑impact crop that’s gentle on the land and resilient in the face of a changing climate.  

Grateful Dead Citrus Daydream Lager is our first spin with fonio, and we’re excited to watch its impact grow as we keep on sippin’.

Off-centered ingredients with a real-world impact

For us, sustainability doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity … it means doubling down on it.

Grains like Kernza and fonio open up new flavors, new farming systems, and new ways of thinking about what beer can be. They’re proof that small choices, like what goes into the mash, can ripple outward in meaningful ways.

So, whether you’re vibing with the juicy haze of our Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale or kicking back with our bright and citrusy Grateful Dead Citrus Daydream Lager, you can sip a little easier knowing  you’re part of something bigger. 

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