Flyers Charities and Garnet Hathaway announce new beer, Engine 19 IPA, with Dogfish Head Brewery

The unwavering connection between hockey and beer is clearer than a pale ale.

There’s nothing better than cracking open a can, popping a top off a bottle, or hitting the taps whenever a hockey game is on. It’s a symbiotic relationship, just like NHLers giving back to the community.

So after collaborating on a beer during his days in Washington, Flyers winger Garnet Hathaway went back to the barrel.

Working with Flyers Charities, Hathaway and his wife, Lindsay, and their foundation, Hath’s Heroes, united with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery to create Engine 19 IPA. Brewed with a purpose, a portion of the proceeds will go to Hath’s Heroes, which will distribute the funds to first-responder nonprofits, including Families Behind the Badge, which aids families of fallen and critically injured first responders in the Philadelphia area.

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“We really want to continue to help first responders and families of first responders. … And we also love beer, too,” Hathaway said during a recent phone interview. “So it’s an awesome connection where we could work with a great company, like Dogfish Head, that shares such similar values and wanting to help the community. [It’s] drink good beer and do good at the same time.”

Coined an approachable IPA, Engine 19 — the number Garnet Hathaway wears for the Orange and Black — has 6.5% alcohol by volume and will launch Sept. 10. Fans of beer and the Flyers will be able to grab a pint or can of the limited-edition beer throughout Pennsylvania and Delaware and at Xfinity Mobile Arena during Flyers games.

Creating a beer isn’t an overnight task. It began a year ago when Hathaway asked Flyers Charities — which has helped the Hathaways with Hath’s Heroes in his first two seasons in Philly, including Hits for Hath’s Heroes, which raised $30,000 last season for Families Behind the Badge Children’s Foundation — for assistance in finding a brewery collaborator.

“We’ve worked with [Hathaway] through different initiatives, and he wanted to do something bigger,” said Blair Listino, the chair of Flyers Charities. “He and Lindsay love craft beer, and so this is really his idea, and we are just helping more administratively than anything else, to bring it, make the launch larger.

“We contacted some local breweries that we thought would be able to do this, and we learned, in this research, that Dogfish Head Brewery actually does this type of thing where they give back to the community through the proceeds. So our group … came back with a great partnership that Garnet was really supportive of and happy because he enjoyed the beers at this brewery.”

The Flyers have worked with breweries in the past. Former alternate captain Scott Laughton had Slap Shot 21, a Czech-style Lager, with King’s Road Brewing Company. Conshohocken Brewing Company and Keith Jones collaborated in 2023 on Jonesy Hockey Lager, a beer that is rumored to still be stocked in fridges around Xfinity Mobile Arena and the Flyers Training Center.

With the Hathaways being craft beer aficionados and Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, which opened its doors in coastal Delaware almost 30 years ago, a local business, it was a perfect match — in more ways than anyone imagined.

According to founder and brewer Sam Calagione, while the brewery is based in Rehoboth Beach, Dogfish Head’s spiritual home is coastal Maine. Calagione grew up in Dogfish Head and when he decided to be a brewer, he apprenticed at Federal Jack’s in Kennebunkport — the town in which Hathaway grew up.

» READ MORE: Flyers forward Garnet Hathaway’s latest charitable endeavor is a real hit for first responders

Their Maine roots run through the beer.

“Maine is known as the Pine Tree State,” said Calagione, whose wife and son went to Brown University like Garnet and Lindsay. “So we kind of identified Chinook and Citra. Chinook and Citra, from the Northwest, are hop varieties that throw a lot of piney, foresty, woodsy aromatic and taste notes. So that’s really the focal point of this recipe: let’s make the most woodsy-tasting pale ale ever. Of course, historically, hockey sticks were made out of wood, too, so we had that connection, as well.”

The beer also features Simcoe hops, with all three giving it a pithy citrus flavor. There are added notes of passion fruit, toffee, and biscuit.

And of course, the beer is orange for the Flyers.

“We also wanted to find some darker grains that give sort of a honey, sweet malt backbone to the beer because those are also the kinds of grains that are going to give a natural orange color,” Calagione said. “So we kind of had those two main goals with the recipe development. Let’s make this naturally as orange as possible, and let’s build it on a base of super piney and woodsy hops.”

The Hathaways were involved in creating every aspect of the beer.

It started with a Zoom call to discuss the flavors, with Dogfish’s staff asking what kind of beers they had in their fridge and what they liked about them. Giving props to his wife, Garnet said that “Lindsay has a really good beer palate.”

There were additional meetings and then testings of different iterations — the final product is only the second or third version created by Bryan Selders, Dogfish’s lead R&D brewer. The Hathaways brought cans to the arena and handed them out to Flyers staff and players to try it. And in May, they went down for a final tasting.

“It hasn’t changed, honestly, that much from the original recipe,” Lindsay Hathaway said. “They sent it to us, and we just immediately loved it. They really just hit the nail on the head in terms of what we like in a beer and kind of what we told them we wanted it to taste like. They’re so good at that, so I think they just got it right away.”

And they got it right with the can design, in which the Hathaways also were involved. The can also is Flyers orange and mimics an old-school hockey jersey, laces and all.

But while this is about beer, it’s also about giving back. It is something the Hathaways have done tenfold — with help from Flyers fans — despite being here for only two seasons.

“We’re so grateful for the opportunities that hockey has given us and for what it’s done for our family that I don’t think we would feel right if we didn’t do anything to sort of give back in some way to a deserving community, to kind of pay it forward,” Lindsay Hathaway said.

“We’re so lucky and blessed, and so to give back to the community was kind of something we always had planned to do. Even if we weren’t in this position, we still would be giving back to our community in some way, but, luckily, Garnet’s position and his career have given us a bigger platform to be able to do that.”