Beer lovers will know a score of stories where this sentence finishes with the word “beer.” The modern revolution in American brewing has been propelled by people like the Wests, who turned away from established careers to carve out a new life in craft brewing. But the West’s narrative is completed with the word “cheese” instead. They opened Hillsborough Cheese Co., where they make a small range of cheeses only available locally. The Wests are kindred spirits to any upstart microbrewers of the last decade.

The parallels between beer and cheese are striking: their histories both start with a varied, home-based industry with strong ties to indigenous producers; the industrial age consolidated manufacturing in the hands of a smaller number of national companies; local styles and businesses lost ground to the ubiquity of a few inoffensive styles; and traditional approaches have recently made a comeback, thanks to a combination of multi-generational regional producers and newly-recruited innovators.

The world of new American cheese even includes traditionalist revival producers (think Anchor Brewing) and what might be called “extreme” cheese makers (think Dogfish Head). There are debates about authenticity: where beer people argue about who can and cannot wear the badge “craft,” cheese makers struggle over the divide between “specialty” and “artisanal.”

We are eating three times the amount of cheese we ate in 1970, according to educator and writer Max McCalman, author of the newly published Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager. “As in craft brewing,” he explains, “less of the enthusiasm is for the processed cheese or the industrial style of beer. There is a growing connoisseurship for fine cheeses.” The steepest growth in cheese appreciation has come in the last decade.

For both beer and cheese, the passion of a small number of producers and consumers has made life at the table more flavorful for all of us.

Prehistoric Sustenance

The similarities between beer and cheese go back to basic biology, and to their origins millennia ago.

One of the fundamental advances in human history had to do with the ability to preserve food, extending a bridge of security that would let communities transform today’s plenty into sustenance for the lean seasons.  Today’s fresh kill is next winter’s cured meat. The summer’s abundant fruit becomes wine. The grain harvest can be saved as beer, and surplus fragile milk becomes long-lasting cheese. A predictable diet could give our species the assurance to extend its reach into otherwise hostile lands. Our ability to modify food is part of what makes us human.

Beer and cheese were both lucky accidents of some 3- or 4,000 years ago, and both probably required that a level of basic technology already be in place. Since grain has to be germinated or baked to make its sugars available for fermentation, it’s likely that early beer arose from the accidental soaking of primitive bread. The first brewers had to already be bakers.

And cheese, which is essentially the controlled spoilage of milk, first required that animals be domesticated for milking. Domestic herds gave milk, meat and materials: a slaughtered animal’s organs made convenient containers. Fresh milk stored in the stomach of a young animal would have separated naturally through the actions of the stomach’s enzymes into curds and whey: simple cheese.

Beer and cheese share an additional attribute: both made the unpalatable safe for consumption. The boiling that was part of brewing killed pathogens and turned unhealthy water into a wholesome beverage. And cheese making converted milk, a food most humans cannot digest after infancy, into a food that could sustain adults who had become “lactose intolerant”—the norm for most of the human family.

The Power of Fermentation

Beer and cheese have changed in the past four millennia, but neither has strayed very far from its origins.

Both owe their character to the transforming power of microorganisms: fermentation. In brewing, simple sugars from grain are converted by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Cheese making depends on the conversion of milk by a bacterial culture that makes it acidic, turning the milk sugar lactose into lactic acid. Then rennet, a digestive enzyme complex from the stomach of an unweaned ruminant animal, curdles the milk, turning it into a solid mass. In essence, casein, the chief protein in milk, is partially digested by the rennet into a solid (curds) and a liquid (whey). (There are now vegetable rennets, also.)

Beyond the process of fermentation, the art of brewing consists of the selection and handling of the grains (barley, wheat, oats, rye, rice among others), the addition of other flavors (primarily hops, but also other spices and fruits), and the careful conditioning of the beer.

Similar choices turn the cheese maker into an artist. Milk from cows, sheep and goats are the most popular selections, though water buffalo, yak, camel, reindeer and mares’ milk have been made into cheese. The cheese maker can also select additional flavoring agents: secondary microbial cultures of mold or bacteria that will ripen the cheese into familiar varieties such as Roquefort or Camembert, as well as fruits and spices. And, lastly, cheeses can be aged under different regimes for weeks or years to attain desired qualities.

The first in the series is John John Dead Guy Ale which is Rogue’s popular Dead Guy ale matured in Dead Guy whiskey barrels. The brew is aged for three months in the oak barrels after the whiskey has been bottled and the barrels emptied. John John Dead Guy Ale is made with Northwest Harrington, Klages, Carastan and Dare malt, Saaz and Rogue Micro Farm Revolution hops, Rogue’s signature Pacman yeast and free range coastal water. The beer is a German maibock deep honey in color with a malt aroma, a caramel, vanillas and oak finish.

It will be available on draft and in 22oz bottles at select retailers starting in January 2010.

This limited release will be followed by the John John Juniper Pale Ale (Rogue’s Juniper matured in Rogue’s Spruce Gin barrels) as well as the John John Hazelnut Brown Nectar (their Brown Nectar being aged in Hazelnut Spiced Rum barrels).

Portland is so rich in places to quaff that we could devote several columns to it. We simply can’t do the city justice in just one. So, for the first time ever, we’re doing two articles about one place. In this issue we’re visiting the Pearl District. Next issue, we hope you’ll accompany us to some of the places located outside of downtown.

Getting around Portland is an utter joy. Your designated driver is TriMet: an extensive, well-run system of buses, light rail and even a European-style streetcar. An inexpensive daily pass will get you anywhere.

So, let’s hop on the streetcar, which does a loop from downtown, and past the famous Powell’s City of Books and into the Pearl. A design staple in these parts is converting industrial property into showcases for good beer. And that’s precisely what Deschutes Brewery Portland Public House has done at 210 NW 11th Avenue.

Last year Deschutes, which has been brewing in Bend, OR, since 1988, renovated an auto shop into a beautiful state-of-the-art brewery and dining area. The outside is freshly scrubbed pale brickwork, with a retro “Deschutes” sign on the corner. As we approached the front door, we saw a smiling gentleman carrying out a case of newly released Jubelale. He gave us a good chuckle by saying “Lucky for you, there’s plenty more inside.”

And there is. In all, 16 taps and two hand pulls of some of the best beer in the world. You’ll find all of Deschutes’ regular lineup, plus a special menu of “exclusive beers” that aren’t available anywhere else. The bartender suggested we try the fresh-hopped Mirror Pond Pale Ale. We did, and our only regret was not being able to make a day of it right there.

The interior decoration evokes a rustic inn, with high ceilings, brightly colored walls and a stone fireplace. Be sure to take a good look at the wooden arches, carved into local plants and animals. The food menu shows some genuine creativity: elk burger, grilled pear and goat cheese pizza, venison chili and a sweet and spicy baked mac-and-cheese made with a sweet chile cream.

Deschutes bottles its beer, and you can find it many places, but all everybody knows there’s nothing better than fresh beer served at the brewery.

Maier is at the top of his field, not just in the view of his admiring customers, but of his colleagues. He was the first of ten men whom peers have honored since 1997 with the Russell Scherer Award for Innovation in Brewing, given annually by the Craft Brewers Association. A glimpse at the careers of these brewers forms a composite picture of where American brewing is today, with leadership of the modern revolution still substantially in the hands of its first generation.

Like Maier, for many of the current generation’s leading brewers, their history is a string of “if not fors…” Only one of these ten brewers planned for a career in beer: the other nine trained for other occupations at a time when a position in brewing generally meant a place in one of the country’s small number of national or regional companies. The American brewing world has changed radically since then—and these brewers have been both the agents and beneficiaries of that change.

Getting Started

Three engineers, a writer, a broadcaster, an anthropologist, a contractor, a theater major, a phone company employee…and one formally trained food scientist. The backgrounds of these ten award-winning brewers are a clear reminder that the American craft beer field is still very young. These men, now in their forties and fifties, took a career step into the unknown when they accepted jobs in the infant craft beer industry.

Rogue Ales master brewer John Maier has just brewed his 10,000th batch, since his start with Rogue in 1989. The former Hughes aircraft engineer laughs about the landmark: “Yeah, and I did that all on my own—no, that’s really that’s our very active marketing department. I shouldn’t get credit for the whole thing.”

Nevertheless, Maier is a prolific creator of beers, with some 60 to his credit, both at Rogue and before, at Alaskan Brewing Co. in Juneau. But, he protests, “I only named one beer in all the years I’ve been here—Brutal Bitter. Jack [Joyce, Rogue's owner] didn’t like the name, but it sort of stuck.”

The fundamentals of brewing keep Maier fresh. For a famously quiet man, he becomes almost voluble on the subject: “The process: I love the process, the sight of bubbling wort. You know, when school kids get a whiff of wort, they hold their noses, but I love the smell.”

Mark Carpenter toured the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco in 1970, and found it “a wonderful place.” Looking for a change from his nine years with the telephone company, he secured an interview with owner Fritz Maytag. They talked, discovered a shared passion for motorcycles, and Maytag gave Carpenter a job.

“In those days, we were a very small brewery,” Carpenter recalls. “I think the first year I was there we did a thousand barrels or under, so you don’t have to brew very often to achieve that! It was all being done by about three people, all the steps, all the way. So the brewery itself was like a brewing university.”

Anchor had just begun bottling, and produced only Steam Beer initially, but Carpenter would be on hand as Maytag, craft beer’s original antiquarian, re-introduced one near-extinct beer style after another to the public.

“When we first brewed our porter, there was not one left in England, and here we were brewing a real porter with dark malts and the whole works,” says Carpenter. “Then we brewed Liberty Ale in seventy-five, which was the first dry-hopped beer in the United States.”

Then came the first use of Cascade as an aroma hop, the first American barleywine, the first modern wheat beer, the first American Christmas beer: thirty-six years later, Carpenter happily recites all the “firsts” that made up his beer education, and graciously gives Maytag the credit.

The Homebrew Connection

Predictably, a fascination with homebrewing is a common element in the histories of many of these brewers, and sometimes the main source of their education.

When Dick Cantwell was caring for a baby daughter at home, he could no longer set aside time for writing fiction. Instead, he remembers, he “got maniacal” about homebrewing. “I was taking care of her during the day, and that was the time I’d devoted to writing before,” says Cantwell. “With homebrewing, I was able to find some sort of happiness: it was something that was creative, but I was able to be with her.”

When he and his family moved to Seattle, Cantwell took samples of his homebrew around brewpubs as his portfolio, and landed his first brewing job at the Seattle Brewing Co. Today, the daughter is in college, and Cantwell is one of the city’s leading brewers, overseeing brewing operations at three different branches of Elysian Brewing.

Cantwell was an early convert to Belgian-themed brewing, partly thanks to his wife, an art historian whose specialization in Flemish painters took them to Belgium often. He was similarly ahead of the crowd with his jasmine IPA, which he brushes off as “old news now.”

The growth of Elysian has given him freedom to experiment. He says “I’m able to brew small one-off batches of beer. I don’t have to worry so much about commercial viability, so that’s one thing that has helped my ability to improvise and come up with new ideas.” Among the new ideas, supplying as many as half a dozen pumpkin beers for Elysian’s Halloween festival.

The demands of a family also persuaded John Mallett to turn to brewing full time. He’d turned from engineering to brewing—“I was in college as a chemical engineer, and I decided to leave chemical engineering because I didn’t want to watch liquids flow through pipes for the rest of my life,” he explained, wryly. But after a spell on the brewing side, he specialized in brewery equipment fabrication and installation, which kept him on the road.

He recalls the day that brought that to an end: “One day I was at Yuengling—I’d been up there a lot. I was driving home, and I stopped and got a hair cut. And my then three-year old daughter didn’t recognize her father walking in. I thought, ‘You know, there’s a lot of ways you can measure success. I think I should go and do something at one brewery for a while so I can successfully raise my kid.’”

Mallett and Larry Bell of Kalamazoo—now Bell’s—Brewing saw a mutual opportunity. Bell needed someone to lead the technical side of his brewing team; Mallett needed stability. Today, Mallett’s main job is translating Bell’s inspirations into hard reality.

“Much of my charge is to figure out how to turn fanciful, creative aspects into actually getting liquid out the back door. So, Larry has come and said ‘We should make and bottle ten different stouts in the month of November.’ And you realize, it’s not like you can stop the production of everything else while that is going on.”

Mallett’s technical mastery has served the industry beyond his position at Bell’s. The other RSA winners point to his generosity with his knowledge, and the lessons in “accessible science,” as he puts it, they’ve learned from him.

A Formal Background

In a complete contrast to all the other brewers, the most recent recipient of the Russell Scherer award has a classical curriculum vitae in brewing. Dan Carey, founder and head brewer of New Glarus Brewing Co., always knew the a career in food would be his future.

Long before he obtained a degree in Food Science from the University of Davis, he’d acquired an appreciation of food, thanks to his family. “I grew up in San Francisco and we would take vacations, car camping in the station wagon,” says Carey. “We’d visit breweries and wineries and cheese factories. I was always enamored with food—the sights and smells—and breweries in particular. Breweries like the Olympia Brewery: the copper kettles, the tiled floors, the shiny stainless. Even when I was very little, I always loved the taste of beer.”

Having selected brewing over cheese-making—both fermentation, after all—Carey held an apprenticeship at the Ayinger Brewery in Germany, worked in brewery construction, came top of his class at Chicago’s Siebel Institute, and passed the Institute of Brewing and Distilling Diploma Examination in 1990, as well as the Master Brewer Examination in 1992.

Carey also has experience in the world of mega-brewing, as a production supervisor for Anheuser-Busch.

Where the other brewers’ stories sound romantic or bohemian, Carey’s is solidly professional. “I liked the cleanliness, the orderliness, the taste, and the tradition of beer. There was an Old World alchemy. The science, the art, the technology and the engineering—it seemed like a neat thing to me.” He makes it clear, though, that he is not, and never has been, a homebrewer.

Among his craftbrewing peers, Carey’s status as the most highly-credentialed makes him seem paradoxically non-conformist. He also seems to take some pride in going against the craft beer grain in other ways.

“We also make a light American-style lager in the summertime, which I just love,” he says. “I laugh because average people—read “paying customers”—love it. It drives the beer geeks nuts. I don’t build my life around the beer geeks; they’re a very fickle group, but they have it in their heads that the more hops you can stick in a beer the better it is. So just for fun we said ‘Oh, yeah? Sometimes a light lager tastes pretty good on a hot day.’”

He continues, “This is not something I say lightly, because I try to be a humble person, but I don’t think there’s a brewery anywhere else in the world that makes a Brettanomyces sour brown ale aged in oak, a strong aromatic IPA, and an American light lager all in the same week. In our own little world of Wisconsin, I think people think we’re a lot of fun.”

Home Schooled

If Carey is stimulated by the classroom, Vermont brewer Greg Noonan delved so deeply into individual brewing education that he felt compelled to turn his efforts into a book others could consult.

When he turned from carpentry and contracting to brewing, he already had a family and a full-time job. Unable to afford brewing school, he read Fred Eckhardt’s occasional newsletter and relied on libraries, going back to the basics.

“It just happens that if you look hard enough in libraries, there’s a ton of brewing books,” Noonan says. “Even common libraries and university libraries had some of the old brewing books.”

“A lot us were self-taught back in that time. There just was nobody to learn from. There was Siebel Institute, or you could go to Germany if you spoke German,” he remembers. The new brewers learned to improvise, and learned from each other. “Look at Ken Grossman. A whole first generation of brewers learned to build their own breweries from dairy kegs, thanks to Ken Grossman.”

Eventually, Noonan amassed enough information for a manuscript. He carried it to a regional conference in Boston. “I walked up to Charlie Papazian and handed him a ream of paper in a box with the return postage, and said ‘If you guys ever consider going into publishing…’ The look on his face was pretty funny. I gave him this box, and he was thinking ‘Oh, boy what is this?’ None of us every got rich writing brewing books, that’s for sure…”

However, the book, Brewing Lager Beer, was the start of Brewers Publications, the publishing wing of Papazian’s Association of Brewers.

Noonan opened the Vermont Pub and Brewery in 1988. At first, he wasn’t sure whether to open a brewpub or a bottling brewery. “My first inclination was a bottle brewery,” he says “but I decided to open a brewpub for a hilarious reason: all the bottling breweries at that time were brewing one, two, possibly three beers and I thought, ‘Know what? I don’t want to be bored out of my mind brewing the same brand. I want a brewpub where we can brew many different beers.’”

In his writing and at his brewpub, Noonan explored techniques that others would embrace. “I suppose we introduced decoction mashing when most brewers didn’t know about it; brewing liquor adjustment; sour mashing is a little more off the wall—nobody had done those things. Brewing with Brettanomyces, we started doing that in our brewery. Beer styles—we were the first commercial brewery to brew a wee heavy, to brew a Tibetan chang—it’s an acquired taste, different from the flavors we’re used to.”

Innovative Ingredients

Some miles to the south and a few years later, Phil Markowski—another reformed engineer and homebrewer-turned-pro—began work at the new Southhampton Brewery on Long Island. He found brewing inspiration locally.

“It was apparent to me that there area a lot of wineries out there,” he says “and I liked the idea of doing a hybrid of beer fermented with wine grapes and aged in wine barrels. So that got us a lot of attention. That was called Peconic County Reserve. I originally wanted to call it late harvest ale, but ATF wouldn’t have it—they said it suggested a wine.”

Markowski’s brewed with edible flowers, and helped introduce barrel aging, “Although I’m sure there were others,” he adds. “As you know, it’s now rampant, and it’s something I don’t’ even bother with anymore unless I’m doing a Belgian style ale. The idea of just putting something in a bourbon barrel just for the sake of getting that flavor—it’s a kind of been-there-done-that thing for me.“

On the other coast, John Harris could be the image of Pacific Northwest brewing: raised in Portland, he walked away from a theater major in college—“technical theater, lighting, sound, so I was already attracted to the technical side of life,” he notes— for a beer career that started at the first establishment opened by the brothers McMennamin. From there, to Deschutes, where he developed Black Butte and Mirror Pond, to Full Sail’s research and development facility, he’s left a legacy of fine, original beers behind him.

But he speculates that his 2001 award had more to do with his contributions to the profession, serving on national technical committees for the Association of Brewers. “And I was the first microbrewer to be put on the Master Brewers Association of America’s technical committee. No microbrewer had ever sat on that committee. Boy, that was a tense day,” he laughs. “For so long craft brewers were not taken seriously by the large brewers. It took a long time for us as an industry to be taken seriously.”

Harris considers the importance of the Russell Scherer Award for Innovation in Brewing. “Trust me, it was a total honor to win that award. Garrett always adds ‘and Excellence in Brewing.’ That’s such a Garrett word, ‘excellent.’

Harris is referring to Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, the Beau Brummel of the brewing community. Though Oliver makes award-winning beers, he is probably best known for bringing media attention to the pairing of beer and food, through his writing and television work.

A student of broadcasting and film, Oliver fell in love with traditional beer and pub culture during a year in England, and felt compelled to create the beers he’d enjoyed on his return to the States.

“In July of 1989, I went from a well-paid job in an air conditioned office to a job in a room full of boiling liquid,” he says. But even as he mastered his new trade, he was drawing on old skills, presenting beer to audiences at tastings and beer dinners. He has become a regular on the Food Network. “The fact that I have a television background means that I know what they need, and how the process goes.”

With the publication of The Brewmaster’s Table, Oliver successfully bridged the worlds of fine beer and fine food, bringing the subject to new audiences. “It’s kind of funny how having a book sort of cements what you’ve been saying all along,” he says. “You can say the same thing over and over for many years, then there’s this big block of wood and—you’re a genius! A book coming out changes how people pay attention.”

Moving Far Afield

How far can a career in beer take a person? Is Singapore far enough?

Fal Allen travels in the widest orbits of brewing. Raised in Hawaii, he moved to the Northwest after studying anthropology in college. While tending bar in Seattle, he started to homebrew. Then began a succession of jobs at well-known West Coast breweries: Red Hook, Pike Place, Anderson Valley. Then, in 2000, he accepted a job with a mission: the construction of the new Archipelago Brewery, in Singapore, starting with a green patch of grass and ending with a 30 hectoliter production brewery. Now in charge of brewing at Archipelago, Allen is bringing American craft beer sensibilities to audiences in Asia, where some of the early buzz of the US craft beer movement is being replayed.

If Garrett Oliver has helped move beer and food closer together, Allen is finding a whole new culinary palette to play with. “The food in Singapore is perfect for beer,” he notes. There is every flavor imaginable and people are very serious about good food and eating. Food is such an integral part of life here that a very common greeting is ‘Have you had your _____ yet ?’—fill in the appropriate most recent meal.”

He finds the Singaporeans open to new flavors, and he, in turn, is receptive to new ingredients unique to the region and its cooking heritage. “We are hoping to try a fruit beer made with local fruit, maybe mangosteen or possibly champara, a cross between jackfruit and durian. We are looking at using Bunga Telang or blue flower, like used in Peranakan cooking or maybe pandan leaves.”

Who knows, after highly-hopped beer, sour beer, barrel-aged beer and beer with jasmine, are Americans ready for the flavors of Asia in their brew?

What’s certainly clear is that the culture of American brewing will permit the best brewers to share what’s new with one another. All ten Russ Scherer winners spoke with affection and gratitude for what a life working in beer had brought them—not just personal achievement and a degree of fame, but camaraderie. The brotherhood—and sisterhood, perhaps—of brewers who will be recognized by peers in the future will all be the beneficiaries of this professional generosity.

America, writes Sifakis, was once truly gifted with nonconformists: hermits and itinerant preachers, flat-earth believers, nostrum peddlers and hoarders of string. Today, he claims, society is less likely to tolerate its eccentrics: “If you are poor and act bizarrely, you’re crazy and perhaps dangerous.”

Sifakis, if he had examined the craft brewing industry, might have changed his mind. The country is dotted with small brewers who entered the market without the benefit of a consumer survey. Their products defy stylistic guidelines. Their labels and packaging are over the top. Their marketing practices are unorthodox, to say the least.

Their numbers include a southern Californian entrepreneur who believes customers should earn the right to drink his beer; a stubborn German immigrant who established the East Coast’s first brewpub in a semidry town in Southern Baptist country; brewers who adhere to the Neinheitsgebot instead of the Reinheitsgebot, using nontraditional ingredients like saffron, rose petals, even garlic.

And they’re not only surviving, they’re thriving.

Magical Mystery Tour

Vermonters have an independent streak. Senator Jim Jeffords made that clear when he bolted the Republican Party, tipping the balance of power in the US Senate. To honor Jeffords, Alan Newman—president of the Magic Hat Brewing Co. in South Burlington, VT—released a commemorative brew, an English mild dubbed Jeezum Jim. (“Jeezum” is a mild epithet in the local dialect.) “They’re really getting a kick out of it,” he says of Jeffords’s staff.

Newman is quite the nonconformist himself. I met him for the first time in April 2000 at the National Beer Wholesalers/Brewers Joint Legislative Conference in Washington, DC. With his flowing beard and floral-print shirt, he stood out like a mast in a sea of business suits. Newman made one concession to decorum: he wore shoes. “I frequently go barefoot,” he said.

Before he founded Magic Hat with partner Bob Johnson in 1994, Newman already had six start-ups to his credit (“a serial entrepreneur” is what the Wall Street Journal called him). His previous venture was Seventh Generation, a mail-order firm supplying environmentally friendly products like recycled writing paper and water-saving shower heads. Alan’s hippie sensibilities are currently reflected in his beer labels, which lean toward surrealistic, occasionally vertigo-inducing designs.

Magic Hat’s best-selling beer is 9, a “not quite pale ale” with a spritz of apricot essence. The hops and fruit meld seamlessly. “I can look people straight in the eye and say, ‘You’ll never have another beer like this,’” he boasts.

Newman has an affinity for the number nine: he markets his beers in nine-packs as well as the usual increments of six. Ask him about 9, however, and he’ll tell you it’s named neither for the Beatles’ Revolution No. 9, nor for the rock ’n roll standard, “Love Potion No. 9.” Newman cautions against reading deep meanings into his beer monikers, which include Jinx (a peat-smoked ale), Blind Faith (an IPA) and Humble Patience (an Irish-style red ale). “If we ever get famous, we’re going to have to hire someone to write stories to go with the names.”

The Magic Hat website at www.magichat.com is a psychedelic experience in itself. In addition to the t-shirts and mugs for sale, you’ll see a very unusual collateral item: prophylactic devices. “Instead of going into a bar with jiggly women in skimpy t-shirts, I give away condoms,” says Newman, who works with the AIDS awareness group, Vermont Cares.

“Our goal is to keep our customers alive and healthy,” he explains.” If we support the community, the community will support us.”

Magic Hat paced New England breweries with 21 percent growth last year, boosting output to 26,000 barrels. “My goal is to be an international brand,” says Newman. “We’ve got a quirky niche and I think our brands will resonate with people in Athens, GA, as well as in Athens, Greece.”

The Brewer with the Midas Touch

When Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats opened in 1995 in the resort community of Rehoboth Beach, DE, it was probably the smallest brewery in America. Owner Sam Calagione brewed twice a day, six days a week, in 12-gallon batches. “When you brew that often, you get bored with the same recipes,” he recalls. So Calagione began to tweak the formulas with whatever was handy in the kitchen. That’s how he developed his penchant for oddball beers.

Calagione is basking in the limelight for Midas Touch, a spiced golden ale inspired by a beverage served at the funeral of the legendary King Midas some 2,700 years ago. Based on an analysis of the residue on ancient pottery shards, the recipe calls for Muscat grapes, honey and saffron. The beer—which tastes something like a pear cider, but with a drier finish—is available in clear-glass, corked champagne bottles throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and in a few more remote markets like Chicago and California.

“There’s no use in doing what’s been done before,” says Sam. His Chicory Stout includes a pinch of St. John’s wort, an herb said to have antidepressant properties. Raison d’Etre, which is vying with Dogfish Head’s Shelter Pale Ale for best-selling brand, is a Scotch-style ale brewed with beet sugar and green raisins. Immort-Ale is a barley wine-strength ale flavored with vanilla beans, maple syrup and juniper berries.