It was about breaking free from the chains of commercial beer that trained generations to think everything had to be sparkling bright and able to sit warm on a shelf for 12 weeks. I was making hazy IPAs in Burlington in the mid-’90s with Greg. The haze was never the intention - it’s a byproduct of the way I achieve the flavors I want and the fact that they’re unfiltered and unpasteurized, which didn’t really exist when we started doing it other than German hefeweizens, something like that. I mean, our beer has only ever had a shimmery haze, nothing like that, but people would say all kinds of terrible things. People would give us shit because our beer was hazy, which is kind of laughable now, considering all the muddy, murky, milky beers breweries are producing and selling today. I mean, for years at the pub we battled that. We were also trying to educate everybody about hazy IPAs. Even 10 years ago, so many stores had a handful of beer in the cooler and everything else was out warm. We were battling, trying to educate our retail accounts about the importance of keeping our beer constantly refrigerated.īefore we started insisting upon that it was kind of unheard of. John: Here in Vermont you’re allowed to self-distribute, so we had total control over every part of the process… It was a huge uphill climb. VinePair: What were some early challenges Heady faced? We went from selling 70 to 80 percent of what we were making out of our space to distributing 100 percent of what we were making. That’s when we decided to shut down our retail shop, which was a real bummer. John: When we rebuilt, the insurance companies wouldn’t insure a brewery in the basement again, so… we sold the building and focused on the packaging brewery, but we got so busy that our property couldn’t handle the number of customers. Nothing could ever prepare me for how many people would forever keep asking me if I sold it after I opened the Manhattan shop. Zach: The first time I heard about Heady Topper was when I was doing research to open my bar… Even then, the reputation surrounding Heady was so over the top it was almost surreal. So I was really excited but then I noticed it was available basically everywhere in that town, including some music venue I ended up at that night where I think I drank about three more during some horrible funk-jam band’s set. It wasn’t something I really sought out on trade forums or anything like that - I’ve never been much of a trader. Probably the best IPA I had drank at the time. I thought it was pretty great, soft but balanced and super aromatic.

Justin: I was on a trip to Vermont and had a can at a restaurant called The Farmhouse. VinePair: Do you remember the first time you heard about Heady Topper? With the pub down, we had no source of income - I mean, that could’ve been the end of the Alchemist right there - but the cans, thank God, enabled us to keep moving forward. The flood hit on a Sunday night and that Tuesday was our first canning run for Heady Topper. We had been running that pub for nine years when Tropical Storm Irene completely wiped us out. And, really, I feel like we haven’t lifted our heads and looked around since. We opened the pub November 29, 2003, a Friday night, and Saturday morning we found out we were having a baby. If I wasn’t brewing, I was a bellman at nice hotels because I liked the cash tips.īut we were never as happy as we were in Vermont… But then it was six years of working and planning and saving and doing everything we could to open our own pub. We got married and started moving all over the place - Wyoming, Idaho, Boston. He got me started, and when I took over the head brewer position there in ’95, that’s when Jen and I met. I graduated, saved enough money to buy a used car and moved to Vermont to search out Greg Noonan, a late friend of mine that started the Vermont Pub and Brewery. At that point, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do, so I went for it. I was doing a research project on the brewing industry and realized it was something I actually could turn into a career. John: I discovered craft beer back in college in the early ‘90s.

This is the oral history of Heady Topper. And, last but not even a little bit least, there’s John Kimmich, co-owner and brewer at the Alchemist in Waterbury, Vt.

Alchemist beer nyc