Every good comic book character needs an origin story, and the one for our hero, Codename: Superfan, begins a few years back, not in Gotham but in Portland, Maine.
That’s where a young man who made beer for Allagash Brewing Co. decided to make a change.
Eric Larkin had lived in New England for nearly 10 years, but moved west in search of mountains, and to be closer to his family in Texas. He found a job in the small Colorado town of Lafayette, where a neighborhood brewery called Odd13 was getting ready to make a big move of its own.
In September 2015, Larkin became head brewer at Odd13’s brand new 30-barrel production facility, which was ramping up operations just a mile from its original location.
An Unlikely Hero
Husband and wife Ryan and Kristin Scott opened Odd13 Brewing in 2013 in southeastern Boulder County, a quiet area about 20 minutes northwest of Denver. The Scotts had moved to Colorado from Chicago three years earlier when Ryan, a software engineer, was hired by Boulder-based Rally Software, but it wasn’t long before Kristin, an MBA with an entrepreneurial streak, turned their passion for beer and her husband’s home brewing hobby into a new business.
The couple designed a superhero theme inspired by Ryan Scott’s childhood love of comics: an origin story for each beer and flashy comic-style label art drawn by their friend Jesse Glenn. “The goal for the artwork was to create packaging that would get the customer to take the first step and pick up a beer from a relatively unknown brewery,” says Ryan, who originally did all the brewing himself while working full-time at Rally Software, where he’s still employed. “After that, we knew the liquid in the package had to speak for itself.”
This story is from the #122 (March 2017) edition of BeerAdvocate magazine.
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This story is from the #122 (March 2017) edition of BeerAdvocate magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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