Dressed in a cowboy hat and plaid shirt and wrapped in his Woody Guthrie persona, Sam Calagione, founder of Milton, Delaware’s Dogfish Head Brewery, couldn’t help but keep grinning as he introduced his 120 Minute IPA to an audience of brewers who showed up at d.b.a. Pub in New Orleans during the 2003 Craft Brewers Conference to drink his beer and listen to him channel Guthrie.
“See what we did, we plated our yeast strains—this is probably the only time I’ll get to describe this and everyone will understand what I am saying—we plated our yeast strains,” he said gesturing with his right hand as if he were spreading icing across the top of a cake. “And we looked under that microscope. And we saw all these little yeast strains and they had all this little leather on.”
He put his hands to his hips and wiggled. “And little whips and chains and shit.” He lifted his right hand and cracked an imaginary whip. “And they were beating the [tar] out of each other.”