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was slow to be enacted. Pioneer John Hickenlooper was instrumental in helping enact brewpub laws in late 1987. It was in 1988 that he and partner-brewer Russ Scherer founded Denver’s first brewpub, the Wynkoop Brewery. Having been homebrewers inspired both of them. Russ had won the American Homebrewers Association’s top honors as Homebrewer of the Year in 1985. He was certainly one of the most creative homebrewers and microbrewers up until his death in the 1990s. Although homebrewers were experimenting years earlier, Russ can certainly be credited with having brewed one of the first microbrewed chili beers in the country at the Wynkoop Brewery. In 2003, John Hickenlooper was elected mayor of Denver.
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    MILE-HIGH GREEN CHILI ALE
    The British would never dream of doing this to their pale ale, but Russ Scherer’s pioneering roasted chili pale ale provides both a spicy and an exotic flavor to an otherwise smooth, purely drinkable English-style pale ale. It has to be brewed to believe. If you love the flavor of green chili, you will adore this beer. The recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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    There are now more than 1,000 brewpubs throughout the United States. Each has its own fascinating story. The invariable common thread is that they were all born of the passion for homebrewing and microbrewing. You will almost always find a founder, brewer or investor with roots in homebrewing and a passion for beer. Certainly the most successful brewpubs in America embrace the passion that is the very definition of the joy of microbrewing.
    Beware the Puritanical State
    D ID YOU KNOW that you are in a puritanical state?” a member of the audience asked me during a speech I was giving on a 1991 book-signing tour in Philadelphia. Suddenly you could hear a feather float. Silent was the room as I hesitated in panicked thought. I had just taken a sip of water to clear my voice. Had they thought I had forsaken them? Everyone’s face seemed to have a shocked expression, staring straight at my hand as if thinking, “Look. He’s drinking water.”
    I scratched my head in confusion and asked, “What’d I do?” I had never been accused of being puritanical, and now my mind began to race, “Oh my God. This is not good. I certainly don’t want to project that kind of image. Quick. Someone get me a beer.”
    On the verge of panic, my questioner began to see the beads of sweat on my forehead and came to the rescue. “No, no, no. I mean you are in a puritanical state; this state of Pennsylvania is very puritanical when it comes to beer laws. You can’t buy anything less than a case of twenty-four 12-ounce bottles of beer in a liquor store. That makes it really difficult to try something new. What if you don’t like it? Well, then, you’re stuck with 23 bottles of, well, er…23 bottles…and the laws are restrictive in the amount of alcohol allowed in beer and all agricultural products must be approved by the state before they can be sold here.”
    I was both relieved (I wasn’t being accused of being puritanical after all) and sympathetic. Yes, in these 50 United States we now enjoy more than 14,000 American-made beers from more than 1,300 breweries spread across the land. Irish-style stouts, Belgian-style Dubbel and Tripels, fruit beers, German-style ales and lagers, British-style real ales and so much more. There are some laws that apply nationally, but the truly weird laws are enacted at the state level. In some states, if a beer is in excess of a certain level of alcohol youmust call it ale, even if it is a lager. Elsewhere, if you brew a traditional stout you can’t call it stout, because wise liquor commissioners translate the word stout as a reference to strength—and it seems they don’t want you to know you are drinking strong beer. How about the state that allows commercial brewing only if you have a farm that grows the ingredients you would