Beer

Dogfish Head and Trillium combine on Tru-Action IPA

Trillium is also releasing limited spin-offs of the collaboration brew.

Dogfish Head and Trillium combine on Tru-Action IPA.

By Gary Dzen, The Boston Globe

June 23, 2022

There’s some humility baked in when Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione describes Trillium’s JC and Esther Tetreault as “fellow mom-and-pop brewery owners.”

Dogfish Head and Trillium are, of course, tremendously successful, the former a pioneer of the entire craft beer movement and the latter at the forefront of the IPA renaissance, as well as the purveyors of several upscale taprooms.

“We had a lot in common,” Calagione says when describing his initial meeting with the Trillium founders in their original, cramped Seaport brewery nearly a decade ago. “We hit it off.”

While both breweries experiment with novel ingredients, they go about it a little differently. Dogfish Head is known for pushing the boundaries of hoppiness with its 60, 90, and 120-Minute IPAs, beers that are continually hopped for maximum citrusy and resinous aroma without crushing bitterness. Trillium has taken a different tack, using brewing techniques and ingredients that play up the fruity notes in an IPA and hide the bitterness almost entirely. Both have produced some of my all-time favorite brews, including Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, which is as bracing as I like my beers but not overly so, and Trillium’s Mettle, a double-IPA that drinks like an outrageous combination of mango, melon, and pineapple but contains none of those actual fruits.

“I like the fact that [the beers] are complex and nuanced, and they are not afraid to depart from traditional ingredient choices and techniques,” Calagione says of Trillium.

Beer fans wondering how a marriage of the two distinctive brands might work can taste for themselves with this week’s release of a collaborative beer called Tru-Action IPA. A single IPA of 6.5 percent alcohol by volume, Tru-Action is brewed with both malted wheat and rye, then dry-hopped with Pacific Northwest hops. Poured from a can into the glass the beer appears orange and a little hazy (less so than Trillium’s usual offerings). I get mostly grapefruit on the nose, but the first sip is ripe with mango and pineapple. There’s a dry, pine-like note to the finish that reminds of Dogfish Head 60-Minute. Overall, it’s a thoughtful union of the two brands that provides a little glimpse into both.

The breweries are celebrating the collaborative beer release with two events this weekend. On Friday, June 24, Trillium’s Fort Point taproom will host a four-course beer dinner (tickets are priced at $140 per person). On Saturday, June 25, from 2 to 4 p.m. Trillium Canton restaurant and taproom will host a chat and book signing with Calagione and Esther Tetreault (tickets are $41 and include a signed copy of Calagione’s “The Dogfish Head Book.” Both breweries’ founders will be available after the chat (no tickets are needed) as Tru-Action IPA is released and the tap room is open for regular service. Cans of Tru-Action IPA will be available throughout Dogfish Head’s distribution area in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Releases of a double dry-hopped version of the beer, as well as DDH Truer-Action double IPA, are planned for Trillium’s Greater Boston locations.