The Big Influence of Tiny Hair of the Dog
This is the second part of an appreciation of Hair of the Dog. Founder Alan Sprints recently announced he was retiring. In this part, we hear from others about what Alan and his beers meant to them.
When a brewery consistently makes fewer than a thousand barrels of beer a year, you might jump to the conclusion that it wasn’t very important or influential. In fact, it’s often the smaller breweries that are the most influential. Freed of the need to cater to large audiences, they can take creative risks larger breweries avoid. That is very much the case with Hair of the Dog, which I profiled in part one of this two-part series. Today I want to hand the mic to a few of those brewers who were inspired by Alan or his beers.
They range from well-known, buzzy breweries like Sweden’s Omnipollo. Founding brewer Henok Fentie, who has done collaborations with Hair of the Dog, put it succinctly: “Alan was and still is one of my greatest influences.” (He had more to say, but we couldn’t connect further before I posted this.) But he also influenced Northwest breweries like Cloudburst and Barley Brown’s as well as East Coast Breweries, Dutch breweries, and Japanese breweries. As Alan begins to wind down Hair of the Dog, we can take some solace that his influence will continue to ripple out in the beers of those who were inspired by his.
Keith Redhead, Woodland Farm Brewery (Utica, NY)
Alan is single-handedly the brewer that inspired me to open a brewery and stick to the styles that I brew myself.
In 2022, there seems to be fewer and fewer breweries that are committed to brewing big beers with a focus on strong flavors and a long term barrel aging program without the need to throw in the kitchen sink of adjuncts. Alan’s unwavering commitment for nearly 30 years of sticking to a great core line of beers is the definition of success and is what has inspired me to focus on the beers that I love to brew and drink by ignoring the noise of ever changing trends.
Alan always brewed beers that he wanted to drink rather than based on research groups which is a mindset that stood out 30 years ago and today. Another incredibly inspiring feature of HotD is that the beers were built to stand the test of time through the art of aging beers. It’s amazing to see the fruition of that long term plan as many of his first beers still continue to drink well and grow into themselves even still. It seems that as so many breweries today are focused on shelf-life and exploding cans, HotD helped to build an American beer culture of aging and cellaring beers. Hopefully the lessons we all have learned from Alan can continue to live in the spirit of our own beers.
Steve Luke, Cloudburst (Seattle)
While I feel like most people's first experience with HotD beer was something dark & boozy & complex - mine was Blue Dot. There are some beers whose sensory elements remain vividly engrained in my memory - and the first time I had Blue Dot, from a bomber back in 2010, is one of them. It was so assertively citrusy, with bright, sharp highlights, that I was shocked by how much it smelled like glass of Sunny D. And it was hazy, bordering murky. And a bit undercarbed. And BITTER. It was like a shaken cask of "Hazy West Coast" IPA that had been transported through a time portal from 10 years in the future. And I was equal parts mesmerized by the intensity of the flavors as I was frustrated by the perceived imperfections. I wondered - What was the intent here? Taste over all other metrics?
It's been 12 years since then. I’d still put that Blue Dot in the Top 10 best IPAs I’ve ever had. And while as a brewer I strive for consistency and quality, I still can't help but think this bomber changed the way I looked at beer. Who cares WHAT it looks like? If it tastes extraordinary, isn't that the most important thing? And I think that perspective has permeated over to quite a few craft beer drinkers as well...which is for the better, for the most part.
Ben Emrich, Nomodachi (Japan)
I never liked beer until I moved somewhere where there was nothing, so when I moved back to Portland I figured I needed to learn to at least respect it. I remember getting a bottle of his at Freddy’s and in my nightly tasting I didn’t know what to do with it, it was just so… much. But I knew it was different.
Over time I kept having his beers from time to time. Respecting and liking them more and more as time went on, his was always the bottle I looked for when I wanted something special and unique. Years down the road I was planning a brewery in Japan and HotD was one of the owners’ favorite brewery. He told me I should stop by and connect with Alan. I went there and was extremely nervous but Alan seemed pretty cool. We chatted for a bit and then he took me for a tour of the brewery and seeing how he made masterpieces out of such old school equipment really changed a lot for me. I had never worked in a brewery before so I had thought that the fancy stuff was needed but he showed me that what’s needed is just the ability and the love of the craft.
Tyler Brown, Barley Brown’s (Baker City, OR)
When I was in the planning stage of opening Barley Brown’s, I would spend time around Portland, and I would buy cases of Hair of the Dog (mostly Fred) at Burlingame Grocery. I was impressed by those beers, and they showed me that I could brew big adventurous beers. They inspired me to use rye in beers - and damn I loved his logos, look of the bottles, and the batch numbers in print.
Alan and I have messaged a couple times since he announced the closing, and we both agree that the beer business is not what it used to be.
Jason Pellett, Orpheus Brewing (Atlanta)
HotD was a huge inspiration for me. When I started homebrewing imperial stouts, my thought process was basically to take Adam and turn it into a stout, and that’s still the core of my barrel program. Beyond style inspiration, the beers are the only ones left that feel like a magical discovery to me every time and remind me why I do this. I never feel jaded sitting at that bar.