From left, New Belgium Brewing's Matt Gilliland, Peter Bouckaert, Penelope Gilliland and Jason Tomsic fill the PH1 barrel for the first time in 1999 at the Fort Collins, Colorado, brewery.
Tony Rehagen
John Laffler is nervous about making his mark on American brewing history.
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-May, Laffler holds an electric branding iron over an upright barrel in a backroom of his Lincoln Park brewery. The barrelhead is acned with 55 expressions of the same half-dollar-sized logo: off color brewing in lowercase script around Mischief, the establishment’s grain mouse mascot. Some of the marks are so dark that the scorched lettering bleeds together; others so light as to be almost invisible.
Laffler takes a breath and sears No. 56 into the wood, releasing a small plume of smoke that reveals a perfectly legible brand. “I think I’ve got it,” he says. “You only get one chance.”
