Dogfish Head Brewery Develops a Beer That Can Develop Kodak Super 8 Film

I like beer. I like film. I like beer and film together, especially when you can process film with beer!

Dogfish Head Brewery has released a Super-Fruit Gose type beer that can be used to develop Kodak Super-8 Tri-X film, and it's aptly named SuperEIGHT. It's a pairing made for the truly eclectic among us, and the journey started when the CEO of Dogfish Head sat down for a chat on a Kodak podcast. The aforementioned CEO and founder, Sam Calagione, was told that a beer's pH, if low enough, could develop Kodak's Tri-X Super 8 film. He stepped away from that podcast and proceeded to do what a quality brewmaster does and put together this special libation that could refresh a developed thirst and also develop your film.

It fits perfectly into the boutique world of alternative film processing like Caffenol. The results can be somewhat less desirable than the norm, but they make for fun experimentation and creativity from the more traditional methods.

Based on the press release and info on both Kodak and Dogfish's websites, this will work for Kodak's Super 8 Film, but no other films are indicated.

The beer itself has eight main ingredients in keeping with the theme. Those include prickly pear, mango, boysenberry, blackberry, raspberry, elderberry, kiwi juices, and toasted quinoa. I don't usually go for a gose-type beer myself, but I'm definitely going to give this brew a shot and maybe even see what happens when it's used on more traditional Kodak Tri-X 35mm film. It'll probably end up not working well, if at all, but half the fun is experimenting.

SuperEIGHT will be released in April, so look for it in your local liquor store.