Harpoon IPA – By Mitch Steele & Sam Calagione

As you share all of your IPA stories, we want to share some of our own. In anticipation of this promotion, we spent some time reminiscing with some of the folks who have been involved with or supported Harpoon IPA over the past 20 years, and we asked them what they remembered. For this post, we are honored to have two more luminaries in the IPA world (Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery) tell us their IPA story.

Sam Calagione, the Founder and President of Dogfish Head Brewery, shared his IPA story with us, about how his first introduction to craft beer also introduced him to Harpoon:

"I tried my first craft beer and saw my first Harpoon Logo in the same week while I was studying for a semester in Sydney. I went to a brewpub down there with guys on my program from Tufts College. One of them was wearing a harpoon hat and I traded him my hat for his. When I graduated college in 1992 I waited tables at an early beer bar in NYC for two years while writing my business plan for dogfish head and I remember first trying and enjoying Harpoon IPA there. Unfortunately I lost my hat. Please tell Rich I will trade him a hat for a hat. Congrats to everyone at Harpoon on this big anniversary!"

When we spoke with Mitch, Stone’s Brewmaster, he referred to his favorite IPA story that was published in his book IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale:

“From 1999 to 2006, when I lived in New Hampshire, I was in the Brew Free or Die homebrew club. My knowledge of great IPA expanded tremendously. We all were brewing IPAs, and at our meetings we sampled some that were becoming available from craft breweries such as Stone Brewing Co., Russian River, and Dogfish Head. Both Castle Spring’s Lucknow IPA and Harpoon IPA became staples in my beer refrigerator, and I continued to research and explore the style at every opportunity (and yes, that meant plenty of tasting!).”

Have a story like Mitch and Sam? Share it with us in our contest for a chance at winning the "Harpoon IPA Experience" for a year, including entry and accommodations at all of our festivals in Boston and Windsor, VT.
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