- The limited edition Asteroid City Lager is available on draft and in cans at Dogfish Head locations in Rehoboth Beach and Milton
- Director Wes Anderson helped design the artwork wrapped around the cans
All of the trappings of a major movie event were there for a screening of “Asteroid City” earlier this week at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in New York.
Director Wes Anderson, whose films have earned 15 Oscar nominations over the course of his career, signed autographs dressed in a power blue suit.
Star Jason Schwartzman smiled for the gathered press as flashbulbs popped.
And in the middle of it all was Dogfish Head co-founder Mariah Calagione, a dash of Delaware in a very Hollywood moment ahead of the June 23 wide release of the buzzed-about sci-fi comedy co-starring Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston and Scarlett Johansson.
So how did the Lewes resident end up at the “Asteroid City” pop-up event just ahead of the film’s Big Apple premiere?
It involves bubbles, of course.
Dogfish Head was contacted by Alamo Drafthouse a couple of months ago, due to their long relationship as host of Dogfish’s Off-Centered Film Festivals. Alamo came armed with an idea to make a beer tied to the film for a string of pop-up events they would be hosting.
Even though there were only two months to get the job done, Dogfish jumped on the project. It was a pretty easy decision since the entire Calagione family are super fans of Anderson’s films, which range from “Rushmore” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” to “Moonride Kingdom” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
“It was a dream project not just for us, but also our design team since [Anderson] is known for his aesthetic,” Calagione says of Dogfish’s first creation made specifically for a feature film release.
With all hands on deck, Asteroid City Lager was born: a limited-edition brew to help advertise the film Alamo Drafthouse events nationwide tied to “Asteroid City.”
The collaboration had its big moment Monday at the Alamo in Lower Manhattan when Anderson and Schwartzman visited a pop-exhibit at the theater and presented a screening for select fans, including Calagione and her daughter Grier.
Was Calagione star-struck or has she met enough famous people over the years to play it cool?
“Are you kidding me? I don’t even know what I said to him,” she says, laughing, before remembering she did discuss the beer for a bit before turning her attention to praising his work.
“I thanked him for letting us be in a little part of his orbit,” adds Calagione, whose title at Dogfish Head these days is social impact leader.
The 5.3% ABV beer was brewed with regeneratively grown pilsner malt, Tuxpeno corn malt and Zuper Saazer hops and finished with a mid-20th century Pennsylvania lager yeast in a nod to the 1950s, the era “Asteroid City” takes place.
While plenty of the beer is being used at the pop-up events for “Asteroid City” at Alamo locations this month, four-packs of 16-ounce cans of the beer are available at Dogfish Head’s Rehoboth location and Milton brewery for $17. It is also available on draft at those locations.
The cans feature the same image of a crater on a desert landscape as seen on a billboard in the film.
“Essentially, it is a billboard advertisement for a billboard advertisement,” Dogfish Head said in press materials promoting the beer, which doubles as a promotion for the film.
At the New York event, there was a wall of the Asteroid City Lager beer cans set up against a copy of the crater billboard, creating a highly stylized display for fans to check out while gulping the new brew ahead of the screening.
Says Calagione: “Hopefully they love it so much that we have to make a beer for every Wes Anderson movie.”
Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and Twitter (@ryancormier).
