Cabanas Beach Bar and Grill on Beach Avenue in Cape May will host its inaugural craft beer dinner Oct. 20 – a five-course meal paired with beer from Dogfish Head Brewing Company.
The dinner was the next step in the bar’s growing craft beer program, said general manager George Kelly.
Kelly said the members of his staff are self-proclaimed beer geeks.
“It started as a casual conversation about how it would be cool to host a beer dinner, and then it took off from there,” he said.
Kelly said the craft beer program began when Flying Fish Brewery, River Horse Brewing Company and Dogfish Head Brewery started to gain in popularity.
“You get tired of drinking the same old stuff,” he said. “No offense to Miller Lite fans, but we were looking for something unique.”
He said Cabanas started to add selections from the New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware brewing company to the bar menu. However, some regulars at the bar had some reservations about putting down that Miller Lite and trying something new.
“We though it was great, but some of our customers thought we had lost our mind,” Kelly said with a laugh.
“Change is difficult in any place that has a loyal following like Cabanas. People know what they like, and getting them to try something out of the ordinary is hard.”
Kelly said that the bartenders gradually got the change-resistant customers to try a craft beer.
The result was a new group of beer geeks.
“Now they are hooked on the craft beers. They can’t get enough,” he said.
The bar currently serves Cape May Brewing Company India Pale Ale., Terrapin Hopsecutioner, Stone Arrogant Bastard, Dogfish Head 60, 75 and 90 minute IPAs, Ommegang Hennepin, Smutty Nose Pumpkin Ale, Victory Donnybrook Stout, Victory Golden Monkey and Original Sin Hard Cider.
Cabanas is the exclusive distributer for Cape May Brewing Company’s IPA, so Kelly started making plans for an event that would showcase beer from the local brewery and food by executive chef John Siuta of Martini Beach, a separate restaurant upstairs from Cabanas.
But because the brewery is just getting started, it doesn’t have enough varieties for a five-course meal, Kelly said.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to do a beer dinner event with them sometime soon,” he said.
He turned to his friends at Dogfish Head to pair beers with the dinner. He and Siuta worked with Nick Vitalo of Dogfish Head on the menu.
“These aren’t beers that you can find on tap or at every liquor store,” Kelly said. “Dogfish Head has them on limited release.”
He said the dinner would start with a lighter beer and move to the heaviest, both in body and alcohol per volume.
The first course will be a softshell shrimp taco with seared shrimp and crispy avocado, paired with Dogfish Head’s My Antonia.
My Antonia is a limited released continually-hopped imperial pilsner. The beer started out as a collaboration with Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione and Birra del Borgo Leonardo DiVencenzo in Italy in 2008. In 2010, Dogfish Head began brewing My Antonia at its Delaware brewery for distribution in the states.
The second course is warm sweet-potato salad with basil, chives, cilantro and lemon-herb vinaigrette. The course is paired with Chateau Jiahu, an “ancient ale” based on a recipe recreated from a 9,000-year-old brew found in preserved pottery jars unearthed in Jiahu in the Henan province of Northern China.
In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used brown rice syrup, orange blossom honey, muscat grape, barley malt, and hawthorn berry. The wort is fermented for about a month with sake yeast until the beer is ready for packaging.
The third course is jerk scallop with arepa corncake paired with Dogfish Head’s Pangea,
a slightly spicy ale that is brewed with ingredients from every continent.
It is made with crystallized ginger from Australia, water from Antarctica, basmati rice from Asia, muscavado sugar from Africa, South American quinoa, European yeast and North American maize.
The fourth course is braised beef short rib with tostones and candied pineapple, paired with Dogfish Head’s Theobroma, which translates to “food of the gods” and is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras. The pottery is believed to hold the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink.
The beer is brewed with cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, honey, chilies and annatto, which are fragrant tree seeds. The result is a light-colored chocolate beer.
The last course is a banana-coconut flan with burnt orange sauce paired with Dogfish Head Burton Baton.
Brewed and released three times a year, it is a blended beer that is brewed with two threads or batches of beer: an English-style old ale and an imperial IPA. After fermenting the beers separately in stainless steel tanks, the two are transferred and blended together in large oak tanks. Burton Baton sits on wood for about a month.
The result is a beer that is 10 percent alcohol by volume that melds the citrus notes from northwestern hops with the woody, vanilla notes of oak.
Kelly said he is looking forward to trying the different brews as much as the customers, particularly the sampling from the ancient series and Burton Baton.
He said customers should not expect “white gloves and tails.” The event will be similar to most dinners at Cabanas – fun and relaxed.
“We are just going to have fun, eat some great food and taste some great beer,” he said.
“We take what we do seriously at Cabanas, but we make sure not to take ourselves too seriously.”
Kelly said he is considering making beer dinners a seasonal event.
“Let’s do this one right, and then we’ll see about planning the next,” he said.
The price is $50, and availability is limited. The dinner begins at 7 p.m. For information call (609) 884-4800 or email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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