DuClaw Brewing Company

DuClaw Brewing Company

DuClaw Brewing Company was founded in 1996 as a brewpub in Bel Air in the US state of Maryland by Dave Benfield. Benfield was an enthusiastic homebrewer who had been expected since his college days to join the family business as an electrical contractor, and who never gave up his passion for brewing despite this career path. When DuClaw opened its doors, the concept of a restaurant with its own small in-house brewery was not unique but still fresh and exciting, and since serving alcohol at the time required at least half of sales to come from food, the business began as a restaurant with a brewery inside. Already in its first year the local paper called the venue «Bel Air's hippest establishment», and Benfield expanded the business in the following years until the simple brewpub became a packaging brewery that today delivers its beers in bottles and cans to several states.

The big breakthrough came in 2011 with Sweet Baby Jesus!, a chocolate peanut butter porter that won the brewery's first internal homebrew competition and was so popular that it became a year-round beer. The name arose when one of the brewers tried the first recipe and exclaimed: «Sweet Baby Jesus! We got it!», an exclamation Benfield knew from his childhood from his grandmother in Georgia. The beer is jet black with a tan head and a full, creamy body, lightly sweet and malty in flavour with notes of chocolate, coffee and peanut butter, balanced by a restrained hop character at 6.2% ABV, and finishes smooth, dry and roasty. At times it accounted for more than a third of sales, won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2014 and is regarded as the catalyst that paved the way for DuClaw's distribution outside Maryland, even though the name triggered occasional complaints when it entered retail chains.

Today DuClaw is based in the Baltimore area and is known for creative beers with equally creative names, drawing inspiration from local Baltimore businesses such as the doughnut shop Diablo Donuts, which likewise pushes the boundaries with unusual recipes. Around the original a series of variants arose such as Sweet Baby Java, Sweet Baby Chai and the pale Sweet Baby Swirl, a golden vanilla white stout at 6.2% ABV, and alongside it runs the sour beer series Sour Me. The brewery's motto, «Craft Be Cherished. Rules Be Damned.», sums up its attitude of cherishing the craft and never following the obvious path, and the beers are today available in states from New York and Pennsylvania to Florida and Illinois.