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The inspiring story behind an unprecedented beer movement

Paul Ogg was painting the interior of the new house he’d helped build, out near Golden, Colorado, where he and his family planned to grow most of their own food, when he collapsed and began shivering.

The flu, he was sure. Between building the house, working in local government, an hour-each-way commute to his teaching job at the Colorado School of Mines and the near imminent opening of Declaration Brewing, a new project with two friends, he had worn himself thin. Of course. All of this work was meant to be one last push, the final frantic steps toward a quieter and more peaceful life. Toward a home where his daughters could roam and discover every day.

Ogg stayed in bed for a week but did not feel any better. He started getting tests. This was in late January, 2015. It wasn’t until March that doctors finally made a diagnosis: peripheral t-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive cancer.

(Courtesy Declaration Brewing)

(Courtesy Declaration Brewing)

“All of those hopes and dreams, right there on the horizon,” he says. “Escaping the rat race, creating the simple life we wanted. Right there.”

A biologist who had studied cancer while working toward a PhD from Iowa, Ogg, knew what came next. Aggressive chemotherapy treatments sapped him of his strength, but he still taught his classes. His family moved. Declaration Brewing flung open its doors.

This week it — and more than 100 other breweries, at least one in every state — will serve an Imperial Porter based on Ogg’s most treasured homebrew recipe. The first-of-its-kind program is part of American Craft Beer Week, an annual celebration put on by the Brewers Association to promote almost 4,500 independent beer makers across the country.Biggest small beer

This promotion is built around the idea of “The Biggest Small Beer Ever Made.” Andy Sparhawk, program coordinator for the association, says there’s never been such a large collaboration between so many breweries. And that was part of why he embraced this idea.

“I think we wanted to show that it’s a unique community,” he said. “Craft beer is inclusive. These people work together; they’re constantly visiting each other’s tap houses and talking about how they do what they do.”

But Sparhawk had to coordinate the plan in the tightest window possible. The Brewer’s Association had originally come up with a promotion that would poke fun at behemoth beer brands like Budweiser — which, of course, poked fun at craft beer with Super Bowl ads each of the last two years. Some members of the association pushed to go a different direction, though, preferring to ignore the swipes.

Sparhawk proposed the idea of getting at least one brewery in each state to make the same beer on the last day of March — leaving very little time to make it happen. He was talking it over with Mike Blandford, another Declaration partner, when inspiration hit. Blandford had been toying with the idea of reaching out to Denver-area brewers and putting together a collaboration to honor Ogg, who has been influential in making Denver into a mecca for beer lovers. Instead, he proposed Sparhawk use a recipe Ogg had come up with — but that yet to be produced commercially — as the Biggest Small Beer Ever.

“This was one that you could tell he really loved,” said Blandford, who had Ogg as a professor before asking him to partner in the business. “I think he’d experiment with everything, try to figure it out, but this is the one he’d come back to every other time.”

Ogg’s version of the porter was meant to mimic the flavors of Heath, his favorite candy bar. It has robust aromas of chocolate and toffee, but is balanced by the smokiness of peated malt and a subtle-but-present hop backing. If you are lucky enough to try it (here’s a list of the participating breweries but  Twitter also has a good discussion on the beer), you may get something slightly different or wholly different; brewers were free to interpret the recipe as they pleased. Judging from reaction on Twitter, some places are calling the beer an Oatmeal Stout — meaning they likely came up with something darker. There are breweries planning to age some of the porter in oak barrels, while others plan to make a sour version.

Tom Flores, brewmaster at Monocacy Brewing and Brewer’s Alley in Frederick, Maryland, adjusted the recipe by using different hops while aiming for the same bitterness level (about 50 IBU). He also fermented the beer at a higher temperature to bring out more fruity notes from the yeast.

Flores made room at his facility despite always having a full production schedule because he was fascinated by the idea of different brewers interpreting the same recipe. He never even heard the backstory; Sparhawk had decided not to explicitly build the campaign around Ogg’s cancer because he did not want to make it seem like a fundraiser.

“The goal, really, was just to quietly honor somebody who has been so dedicated to craft beer,” Sparhawk said, “and who has really been influential in so many ways.”

Ogg’s background in microbiologist has helped Declaration carve out a unique spot in the saturated Denver beer market. He has cultivated about 65 unique strains of yeast; most breweries rely on only three or four different kinds. “We call him our Yeast Yoda,” Blandford said. “He’s quite literally one of the top three yeast scientist in the Western Hemisphere.”

Ogg, 46, began brewing his own beer while in graduate school, when a friend introduced him to the idea. He originally saw homebrewing as a way to make cheap suds to guzzle.

“But the people I was with made me taste the ingredients before hand, and then a few weeks later I saw how they were expressed in the beer. Good quality beer. I was just blown away,” he said. “Up until that point I was probably an alcoholic. But I went from a beer drinker to a beer appreciator.”

He first began developing his porter recipe eight or nine years ago, mostly as a beer to savor after dinner. He brewed it for himself to enjoy through the early days of parenting his children Kate and Ellie, now 7- and 6-years-old. He invited new friends over to try it, explaining to them the subtitles of the flavors so that maybe they’d get hooked on craft beer as well.

Ogg has not had much to drink since his diagnosis. The original rounds of chemo helped, and he had a brief remission late in the year. But the cancer has proven relentless. He flew to Houston this week in hopes of having a stem-cell transplant at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, only to find that the cancer had spread too far. He plans to attempt at least two other forms of treatment in Colorado, and then possibly another one in Houston.

“I want to try to stay near my girls if I can,” he says.

(Courtesy Declaration Brewing)

(Courtesy Declaration Brewing)

Ogg should be able to make it to Declaration Brewing on Thursday of this week, and hopes to taste his beer — called P.D.Ogg Porter there (his middle name is David), but a variety of things elsewhere — for the Nationwide Toast set for 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT). He wants to go to the other Denver area breweries — many run by friends and proteges — that made a version of his beer, too. “It’s amazing to think that this is happening,” he says.

He is also looking forward to celebrating his 18th wedding anniversary in June with wife Kristen, who had breast cancer five years ago, and another summer of his family enjoying their new home.

“The girls, they run and learn about bugs, see beehives,” he says. “There’s a hiking trail nearby. The property is surrounded by horse farms. These big, open spaces. It’s beautiful.

“I hope I get to live.”

(Courtesy of Paul Ogg)

(Courtesy of Paul Ogg)

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