Doug Dozark of Peg’s Cantina

During the day, Doug Dozark runs production for Cigar City Brewing. And when he’s not working the production line, he’s in Gulfport, Fla., churning out beers in 35-gallon batches for the family restaurant. Dozark wanted to work on his own, on a small scale, to maintain a level of intimacy with his beer and the customers drinking it, and holding down a full-time job on top of that is just the cost of doing business. He originally came to Cigar City in Tampa as a volunteer looking to learn brewing on a 15-barrel system. Cigar City’s brewmaster, Wayne Wambles, will give Dozark notes on recipes, but his advice usually concerns which brewing books to pick up. “Wayne doesn’t mind giving input, but he pushes people to be their own brewer. I definitely appreciate that,” says Dozark. “Now that Peg’s has gotten more recognition, it’s nice to be able to say, this is mine, all my recipes are my own.” Not that he’s resting on any of those recipes. “Until I’ve made my favorite example of a style, I’m not done.”

1. Tap greatness
Doug Dozark found craft beer by way of his family’s restaurant business. Dozark’s parents run a Mexican cantina in Gulfport, and he assembled the cantina’s beer menu. That one act—and the steady supply of hoppy goodness that followed—drew him in. At the time, Dozark says, Florida’s craft beer scene was “pretty much nonexistent,” but the beers his distributor sent his way—from Boulder Brewing, Oskar Blues, Great Divide, Schneider, Hofbräu and Weihenstephaner—opened his eyes to what beer could be.

2. Untangle mysteries
It was one of the regulars at Peg’s, and a fan of Dozark’s award-winning beer list, who first introduced him to brewing. They brewed an American Stout together in the Peg’s kitchen, and that one batch snowballed into a career. As the son of a former chemistry professor, Dozark immediately grasped the science of brewing. But it was creative freedom that kept him at it. “It seemed mysterious at first,” he says, “but with some practice and a bit of knowledge, I said, hey, I can do this. The accessibility of brewing was something that grabbed me and kept me going.”

3. Work hard, and connect with your work
A stint working the Oskar Blues canning line taught Dozark what it takes to run a commercial brewery. The job also taught him what he really wanted to get out of a brewing career. He loved drinking Gordon and Dale’s Pale Ale, but canning left him feeling disconnected from the end product. “I realized I didn’t want to just run process. I didn’t want brewing to become just a job. Cleaning tanks is fine and all, and it’s impressive when they’re 200-barrel tanks, but that’s just not the side of brewing that interested me. You have to keep your passion for beer alive.”

4. Get creative
When Dozark looked around the craft industry, he saw a glut of brewers with the same experience level he had, and they all had dreams of working their way up from the cellar room. He didn’t feel like joining that race upward. Instead, he returned home to Gulfport with a proposition for his parents: He’d brew small batches for their restaurant, they’d pay him by the batch, and he’d find some side job to pay the bills with. “There’s definitely something different about brewing your own beer and critiquing your own work. I wanted to be able to maintain creative control of my product. I didn’t know if [Peg’s] would be viable, but I had to at least try.”

5. Just try it
Peg’s has turned beer-geek heads for its playful takes on the Berliner Weisse style. Dozark was initially drawn to the style because his book on German wheat beers didn’t even discuss it; there was just one lonely Berliner Weisse recipe in the back. Dozark had to know more. He called around, found no consensus about how best to run his sour mash, and decided to run his spontaneously fermented batches on a trial-and-error basis. “It was the hardest beer to get direction on, but it’s also so incredibly inexpensive to just try it,” Dozark reasons. “There’s not much grain in the recipe, there’s almost no hops, so why not just try it, see what you get, and go from there?”

6. Play around
Dozark likes working with Berliner Weisse because it stands up to the Florida heat, and “you can put tons of nuance into that tiny little alcohol percentage. It’s a tart, refreshing, clean beer you can do anything with.” One batch tasted briny, so he added tomatoes and peppercorns to make a bloody Berliner. Another favorite, Rainbow Jelly Donut, plays sweet raspberries off biting Key limes in a seriously pink-colored beer. One aged batch began showing intense green apple notes, so it became the jumping-off point for a Jolly Green Rancher beer. “In most beers, green apple is a flaw, but not with Berliner Weisse.”

7. Bigger isn’t always better
Imperial Stouts routinely put brewers’ systems to the test, and Peg’s Centennial Stout (since renamed “G.O.O.D. Night Stout”) is no different. Dozark’s first batch for Peg’s took 18 hours. Two mashes go into every boil. But size is far from Dozark’s primary objective. “Malty beers have to have some body, and I feel a lot of examples of the style end up a little thin, either from over-attenuation, or from the alcohol. I’d rather have a flavorful, full-bodied beer, regardless of the alcohol content, than say, oh, this is 18 percent.”

8. Round it out
The base recipe for Dozark’s Porter dates back to the days when he was still brewing in 5-gallon batches. He had initially set out to brew a Brown Ale, but couldn’t resist piling on extra pounds of chocolate malt; the result was a classically colored Porter. Dozark’s version is modest in size and moderately hopped (at just 5.5-percent ABV and 25 IBUs), but a massive specialty malt bill—base malt comprises just 45 percent of the grains in the mash tun—shines through. Healthy doses of special roast, chocolate and caramel malts, and flaked oats give the beer the round mouthfeel Dozark looks for in malty styles. “Those nice malt characters should have that coating effect on your tongue,” he argues. “When it’s there and gone, you don’t get that lingering rich chocolate or caramel malt sweetness.”

9. Hops can’t go it alone
Dozark tried dialing up his IPA after tasting a friend’s homebrew that was calculated at 140 IBUs, but he hated the result. The real breakthrough wasn’t in how many hops he was throwing in the kettle, but when: His IPA really jumped into shape when he began adding his first hops to the kettle before adding wort for the boil. He’s currently using seven hop varieties in his 75-IBU IPA, but Dozark insists that the key to making them all shine is paying attention to his small specialty malt bill. He uses judicious doses of caramel and Munich malts, and is careful not to dry them out too much, leaving the hops with some bright sweetness to springboard off of. “I think West Coast brewers are under-appreciated for their work with malt,” Dozark says. “There’s a significant amount of finesse with the malt bills in those IPAs to make the hops come through so well. I’m still envious of several of them.” ■