Esquire TV shoots 'Brew Dogs' here
Esquire TV is the guy-centric network inspired by the magazine and backed by NBCUniversal. One of its original series has been taping in Philly.
Sept. 23 marks the debut of Esquire TV, the guy-centric cable network inspired by the magazine and backed by NBCUniversal.
One of its original series taped in Philly, wrapping last week.
Brew Dogs stars James Watt and Martin Dickie, who own Scotland's BrewDog brewery. In each hour-long show, they visit a different American beer town, celebrate craft beers and create their own locally inspired draft.
For the Philly episode, the show partnered with Victory Brewing.
The idea, says executive producer Jared Cotton, was to "try and make the most American beer ever brewed. We wanted to take the idea of a colonial recreation beer to a whole new level by infusing as much Americana into it as we possibly could."
They brewed it on a float in Pottstown's Fourth of July parade. "In addition to your basic beer-making ingredients, we added data-encoded DNA that contained 328 million copies of the Declaration of Independence, one for every man, woman and child in the country," Cotton told me.
Huh? The Declaration in a beer? Is this what you mean by "wee, the people"?
"Beer is one of the building blocks of civilization, the Declaration of Independence is one of the key building blocks of our country and DNA is the building block of life. Declaration Nation Ale. We thought it all fit," he said, declining to say if anyone actually drinks this DNA-infused beer. (The question is answered in the show.)
"As much as the show is about brewing beer in fun, challenging and often ridiculous ways, it's also a way for us to show off craft beer culture and how it fits in to the cities that we visit," Cotton said.
Brew Dogs cameras visited such stops as Barcade, Eulogy, Farmers' Cabinet, Kraftwork and Monk's because "you can't talk about craft beer in Philly without talking about places like that," he said.
Each episode includes a food stop. Brew Dogs worked with Federal Donuts to create doughnuts that not only used beer in the glaze but were designed to be paired with that same beer as well. Watt and Dickie made a grapefruit brown sugar doughnut that used Sly Fox IPA and a double chocolate cherry doughnut that used Lancaster Brewing Milk Stout.
The episode's premiere date is set for Oct. 1.
Here's a trailer.