(Harpoon Brewery, 306 Northern Ave., 61, www.harpoonbrewery. It’s something I want to continue to do for a long time still.” We just put our heads down and our shoulders into it. In the summer of 1993, a struggling brewery in Boston decided to do something different. “We were too young back in 1986 to have too much perspective on what we were trying to do or on life in general. Harpoon Brewery first brewed Harpoon IPA as a summer seasonal in 1993. “It’s been an amazing journey,” said Kenary. It returned to the brewery for a sold-out beer bash last night 30 years in the making, highlighted by retro-1980s tunes and clothes. The tour also stopped at Jacob Wirth’s in the Theater District, the Bell in Hand at Faneuil Hall, the Warren Tavern in Charlestown and downtown newcomer State Street Provisions. “Today I’m happy to call (owner) Jack Kiley a friend and a mentor.” “I remember how nervous I was 30 years ago trying to get that account,” said Kenary. It kicked off at The Sevens Ale House on Charles Street, which holds the distinction of being the first pub to pour Harpoon. Kenary’s tour yesterday was a nostalgic romp through the brewery’s history, featuring the people and places who helped put Harpoon on the map. “We went from survival mode to ‘Holy (expletive)’ and to really growing the business.” “The years that followed the introduction of IPA were banner years not just for Harpoon but for a lot of craft brewers,” Kenary said. Harpoon IPA was 10 to 15 years ahead of its time. More impressively, IPA has since become the definitive style of the American craft beer industry - produced by thousands of breweries in ever-growing variations. It is still Harpoon’s biggest seller, and by a wide margin. Harpoon IPA quickly went from quirky seasonal to year-round flagship. It ignited Boston taste buds like few beers before or since. Kenary, now 55, opened Harpoon with his Harvard Business School classmate Rich Doyle, banking at the time on former flagship brand Harpoon Ale, the beer’s salty harpoon-wielding whaleboat sailor imagery and the novelty of neighborhood-brewed beer. “I never would have dreamed that with our fellow craft brewers we would change the scene as much as we had,” said CEO Dan Kenary, who yesterday led a tour of landmarks in the history of Harpoon as part of its 30th anniversary celebration. Harpoon played a critical role in its evolution - most notably through its India pale ale, a Boston original that became one of the single most influential beers in American history. Thirty years after Harpoon opened its then-humble doors, the American beer world is the most creative and dynamic in the world. But local beer appeared like a distant delicious mirage to the flavor-starved masses back in the mid-1980s, when the only suds available were copy-cat fizzy yellow lagers manufactured not in your neighborhood but in far-flung national beer factories. Today there seems to be a brewery in every neighborhood. It’s nearly impossible these days to imagine the awe-inspiring novelty Harpoon Brewery inspired when it opened on the Boston waterfront in 1986.
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