“With that said,” Alchemist co-founder and Heady Topper inventor John Kimmich begins, “I still remain shocked at how many people walk through these doors and have never heard of it before. Walk in and are like, ‘What do you guys do here?’ I find that astounding at this point, but not particularly shocking, because it’s a big world. If you think everybody's found out about it, far from it. The reality is, even as big as craft beer is, it’s still a pretty small slice of the overall fabric of the world.”

You can get Heady at the Burlington airport—casually, and just as easily as you can get Sam Adams Boston Lager in most other airports. Or a Magic Hat Number 9, for that matter, which is sold with a chipper introduction that's so jarring it's almost convincing—wait, what the hell are you talking about, the Heady please. The can pops, it thuds on the bar, she walks away, you drink it from the can.

There’s more Heady Topper being made than ever before. And that’s important to understand, because it’s actually being pulled back off the streets a bit. The Alchemist just opened its long-awaited production brewery where they now sell mixed cases of Heady, Focal Banger, and, at the moment, another Double IPA called Crusher. All are monstrously hoppy beers, but it wasn’t always this way.

There were always long lines and on-site sales, but between the fervor of its first and its most current iteration, the Alchemist beers flowed freely, if insufficiently, into town. But now, with a shiny new production brewery, the assumed promise of a Heady in every pot has taken a different turn. The bars, restaurants, and retailers who sold Focal on the regular—and Heady when they could get it—are now coming up short. Focal is exclusive to the brewery, and Heady has been cut by a significant percentage. The age of the full-margin brewery-retailer is in full swing.