How to be Unforgettable: Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

Name: Palo Santo Marron

Brewer: Dogfish Head (Delaware, US)

Type: Brown Ale

ABV: 12%

Label: 3

Look-Cs: 17

Snout: 15

Texture: 17

Flavor: 28

X-Factor: 10

TOTAL: 90

Rememberer of Things Baked

If this stout  brown ale were a cookie, it would be the most famous cookie in Western literature: the Madeleine. 

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“Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.”

-Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Known as the “forgotten heart” of South America, Paraguay is landlocked between Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil, and offers little in terms of typical tourist attractions. Deep in the forests of this oft-overlooked destination grows Bulnesia sarmientoi, the tree that produces Palo Santo, or “holy wood” – one of the toughest woods in the world.

Tough wood

Palo Santo caught the attention of John Gasparine, a Baltimore-based businessman interested in sustainably harvested wood. According to a New Yorker piece, the wood “was so heavy that it sank in water, so hard and oily that it was sometimes made into ball bearings or self-lubricating bushings. It smelled as sweet as sandalwood and was said to impart its fragrance to food and drink. The South Americans used it for salad bowls, serving utensils, maté goblets, and, in at least one case, wine barrels.”


Gasparine contacted Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione to suggest he consider aging a beer in this aromatic superwood. Within a year, Calagione sent Gasparine back to Paraguay to "get a shitload" of Palo Santo. 

Gasparine assembled a crew of rugged Paraguayan millworkers with the toughness to match the wood, and after a twelve-hour bus ride and half day drive into the forest, the group arrived upon some palo santo trees. One of the millworkers offered to cut away a swath of the tree for a smell test to confirm that it was indeed Palo Santo:

"Then he starts hacking away for five or ten minutes. Nothing. Can’t get through the sapwood. So the monster Carlos goes at it. The blade looks like a butter knife in his hand. Nothing.” After a while, Carlos turned to one of his sidekicks and sent him back to the truck. When he returned, he was holding a .38-calibre pistol. “Now I’m a little more than freaked out,” Gasparine says. Carlos took the pistol, swivelled it toward the tree, and fired a single shot from five feet away. The bullet struck with a dull thud, then fell harmlessly to the ground.”

The Palo Santo was sent from Paraguay to another unfairly dismissed spot on the map: Delaware. Dogfish Head started its beginnings in Rehoboth Beach as the first brewpub in the state. After signing the lease for the space on the boardwalk, Calagione shortly discovered that bars and restaurants in Delaware were not allowed to brew their own beer. He lobbied the state congress to change the rules, and soon after, Dogfish Head was up and running.

Upon receiving the wood, Calagione was faced with a new challenge: the Palo Santo was so aromatic and strong that he needed a beer flavorful enough to not be overpowered by the wood.

He chose a strong brown ale composed of three kinds of hops, five kinds of wheat and barley, some unrefined cane sugar, and a yeast for a Scottish ale. The Palo Santo barrels hold around 10,000 gallons of wonderful – the largest barrels around since pre-Prohibition times. This ultimately produces a creamy, complex and aromatic brew drawing a strong resemblance to an imperial stout.

Palo Santo Marron pours black with a reddish hue when held up to the light. The head is a sandy, tanned color with a decent lacing. The mouthfeel is nice and creamy, almost viscous like some of the best imperial stouts.

Ultimately, what’s most compelling on this beer is the unforgettable snout.

I haven’t yet been so lucky to run my sniffer along a nice cut of Palo Santo wood, but it’s fair to guess that this wonderwood is mostly to thank for the snout on the beer. Wood, tobacco, chocolate, alcohol, chilies, brown sugar—it all sneaks its way in and evolves in a single inhale, as well as when the beer warms up.

Famous cookie

Perhaps this is why when people mention their weekend trip to Rehoboth, or I spot a Dogfish label in the beer store, my heart pitter-patters a bit stronger than it would for equally desirable beers, say, an Old Rasputin. When I crack a bottle open, and stick my nose into the glass, I’m immediately transported to some of my favorite moments shared with this beer—the leisurely summer of 2011 filled with old friends, new adventures, and a hyper-awareness that the nature of what was fun and fulfilling for me was beginning to change.

A “Proustian memory” is characterized by this precise feeling—an encounter with a scent brings back a flood of, often distant, but always striking and specific memories. Marcel Proust, in Remembrance of Things Past writes of eating a Madeleine cookie dipped in lime-blossom tea, and being transported back to another time in his life:

…and as soon as I had recognized the taste of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me ... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set ... and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine.

Indeed, smell is the sense most closely tied to memory, and physiologically offers up the greatest advantage for recalling complexity—smell receptors can be 3,400 times more sensitive than taste receptors.

Perhaps what separates joy in adulthood from childhood joy is the concept of seeking coherence over seeking novelty. Adults become interested in the naming and classifying of things, while the young get a rush from looking for what is new and exciting. The Palo Santo Marron happily straddles these two worlds—it’s solid, balanced and complex while being bold, uncategorizable and arguably irreverent. It is birthed from locales that are considered forgettable, boring, matured—but staunchly break this mold. Much like the wood, it is both tough and seductive. It is the aromatic palo santo barrels that allow this beer to accomplish so much, while being boldly contradictory, and ultimately, unforgettable.