Sam Calagione, founder and president of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Photographer: Kevin Fleming/Dogfish Head Craft Brewery via Bloomberg

Mariah Calagione vice president of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Photographer: Dave Kammerdeiner/Dogfish Head Craft Brewery via Bloomberg

Fifteen years ago, at the height of the microbrew renaissance in the U.S., when there were nearly 800 craft breweries around the country, Delaware had none. Amateur brewer Sam Calagione, then 25, hatched a plan: Open the state’s first restaurant and brewpub in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, where his wife’s family lived. Despite lacking any business experience, he managed to borrow $110,000 from friends and relatives, then convinced the local bank to match it.

Shortly thereafter, Calagione learned why Delaware lacked a single brewery. The state had banned them in 1933 after Prohibition was repealed. Undaunted, Calagione spent $3,000 to hire a lawyer, who helped him draft a bill to overturn the law. It passed in the spring of 1995.

That summer, Calagione opened for business, using his restaurant’s bar as a test kitchen for beers he hoped to sell wholesale while he worked out the kinks of operating a production brewery and getting distribution. Over the years, the brand gained a reputation for unusual flavors and ingredients, including green raisins, pink Peruvian peppercorns, and purple maize. A born showman, Calagione’s publicity stunts -- such as crossing the Delaware River in a homemade raft to introduce the beer to New Jersey -- helped capture attention.

By 2001, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery had become consistently profitable, says Calagione. He estimates $40 million in revenue this year and $50 million in 2011, putting the 130-employee company, headquartered in a 100,000-square-foot brewery in Milton, Del., among the top 20 of 1,600 domestic craft breweries, according to the trade group Brewer’s Assn. Calagione attributes much of Dogfish’s success to word-of-mouth recommendations. “That’s the grassroots consumer way we have grown from day one, and our social media efforts today are the evolution of that ongoing reality,” says Calagione, 41, who advocates using online tools for marketing.

Fan Created Facebook Page

Ever since the arrival of the Internet, hardcore beer lovers have sought each other out in myriad chat rooms and forums. The only difference now is that such sites as Facebook and Twitter act as central meeting places where fans can easily find and talk to one another. Dogfish Head is doing its best to embrace this landscape. “Instead of sending everyone to our website, we are pulling them off of our website and sending them to our Facebook page,” says Calagione’s wife and co-owner, Mariah, 39, who runs the four- person marketing team. She estimates that over the past three years Dogfish has shifted half its marketing efforts to social media.

Dogfish’s Facebook page was created by a fan in Texas and had 3,000 friends when Mariah first contacted her in 2008 and asked for administrator privileges. The woman obliged and Mariah took over. “Once we started being active, our biggest challenge was letting people know we were on Facebook and Twitter,” says Mariah. “We had people coming up to us all the time saying, ‘I can’t believe you guys are on Twitter.’” So Dogfish marketed its presence by giving away stickers printed with its online addresses on them at the restaurant and brewery. To date, Mariah has posted over 10,000 tweets. She spends the majority of her time announcing promotions and events, answering customers’ questions, and recommending beers.

As of late September, Dogfish had 81,000 Facebook fans. Brewing behemoths Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, which account for 90 percent of the beer sold in the $100 billion U.S. market, certainly don’t lack for numbers. However, while Anheuser- Busch’s Budweiser beer page had 400,000 Facebook fans and Coors Lite’s page had 448,000, these are relatively small figures compared to their colossal sales. The giants each had fewer than 2,000 Twitter followers, while Dogfish had over 23,000.

A Manhattan Dogfish Brewpub

Social media expert and bestselling author Seth Godin says consumers want to identify with Dogfish because it makes them feel part of something unique. “Budweiser is average beer for average people,” he writes in an e-mail. “No one cares much about them, and no one is going to ‘friend’ them or follow them. What a waste that would be ... they’re boring on purpose. Dogfish Head wants loyal fans, not a huge audience that couldn’t care less.”

Anheuser-Busch, which increased its investment in social media nearly twofold over last year, says Facebook is its preferred destination for online consumer engagement. It fills its Facebook pages with TV commercials, contest updates, and photo albums, but rarely updates its Twitter account. “Our presence on Twitter will evolve on a brand-by- brand basis as we evaluate which platforms best connect adult consumers with our products,” says Keith Levy, Anheuser-Busch’s vice-president of marketing. MillerCoors did not respond to requests for comment.

Online and off, Dogfish keeps trying to appeal to a select group of beer drinkers. By the end of November, Dogfish Head will expand into new territory, teaming up with celebrity chef Mario Batali and his partner Joe Bastianich to introduce its first brewpub in Manhattan. The rooftop space will crown Eataly, the recently opened, 50,000-square- foot, gourmet Italian food-and-wine emporium on Fifth Avenue. Online chatter is increasing. “So impressed with the Dogfish selections,” one fan on Dogfish’s Facebook page commented recently about the selection of Dogfish beer already available in the store’s grocery. “Sahtea? Theobroma? Hey! I want to see those at stores and restaurants in DC! :)"