Mr. Calagione and a sign made from toast. As usual, thinking outside the breadbox.

Sam Calagione is the president and founder of Dogfish Head, a brewery based in Delaware that is known for its “off-centered” ales, as they lovingly describe them. He is also good-looking (and knows it), charismatic, and a little bit nuts. Somehow the man is able to harvest all these traits and inject them directly into the wort of Dogfish Head brews, producing some of America’s most unique, imaginative, extreme, crazy-ass beers. All this is relevant because the Dogfish Head Brewery is sponsoring Beer Advocate’s 11th annual Extreme Beer Fest in a matter of days.

I have been to exactly one Extreme Beer Fest. (In my memory I was the only woman there, but that can’t be right…) It was there that I met and grazed the fingertips of the legendary Sam Calagione. As strange as some of his beers may be, I have always admired him because of just that, and also because he’s good-looking, as aforementioned. Also, he has an English degree like yours truly, and makes his living in beer, which is totally rad.

Now, when Mr. Calagione tenderly poured me a sample, filled it up to the lip and smiled as he expertly handed it off, I had a question for him. But despite my press pass and the hour or so of courage I’d been sampling, I couldn’t just ask it. Instead I fumbled the pass-off, stepped on the toes of a man behind me, and veered, beer-soaked, back into the fray of increasingly jovial beer extremists.

My question for Mr. C, then: Why?

Before tackling that one, I suppose we should answer the question of what makes a beer extreme in the first place. Before the first Extreme Beer Fest, over a decade ago, Beer Advocate posted an article on the subject, defining extreme beer as “style-defying” and asserting that it is “a movement to showcase the craft and how complex and versatile beer can actually be.” One of their statements revealed the fear that extreme beer is actually “a pissing contest to see who can make the world’s strongest beer,” which it is, of course, but not exclusively.

Dogfish Head is a good example of the artistry behind extreme beers as well as the artistry behind self-promotion. Calagione has been written about time and again by non-beery publications like The New Yorker, intrigued by his barrels made of the hardest wood on earth found in Paraguayan rainforests, his reproduction of 2,700-year-old beer-like recipes, his beer that involves saliva…yes, his saliva.

I wanted to ask Calagione why some brewers would be so adventurous and others were content trying to make, say, the best IPA ever. What role does extreme beer play in the history of beer? Why won’t you just settle down and make a solid pale ale I can sip without making a face?

I suppose, in the end, the why doesn’t matter because the extreme beers are already here. I suppose the answer is why not. One thing I retained from my many history and literature classes (I’m using my degree!) is that there are always extremes in every movement and that they are necessary for the less-extreme to become the norm. To many beer drinkers, craft beer in general is the extreme, when compared to the norm that is the High Life. So to follow the logic, eventually craft beer will be the norm and the Buds of the world will evaporate like the foul, watery excuses for a good time that they are.

I am grateful Sam Calagione is around and the beer industry is indebted to him and his fellow extremists for showing us what all beer can do. (And maybe, sometimes, what it shouldn’t.) Next time I see the guy I’ll give him a warm handshake and pat on the back, say “way to keep us on our toes!” Just kidding; I’ll run away.