Making White was only the first step, of course. Getting it out into the world was a different problem entirely. The Great Lost Bear is a Portland, ME craft beer institution. Opened in 1979, at a time when acquiring craft beer was vastly different than it is now, it’s kept its doors and its tap lines—now 78 of them—open for craft beer enthusiasts ever since. It’s also the very first place that stocked Allagash White.

Much like brewing, owning a craft beer bar was very different in the ‘90s. While bars today are faced with paralyzing choice, back then, The Great Lost Bear had to hustle to get interesting beers on tap.

“We would drive to Boston to pick up unusual and experimental beers from Samuel Adams, swing over to Boston Beer Works to get some beer, and stop at Ipswich Brewing or Berwick Brewing to get a keg or two,” Great Lost Bear co-owner Dave Evans says.

He recalls the very day Tod asked to put White on tap: “We went over to his one-man brewery to try one of the first pilot batches. It was a hot summer day, and three of us from The Bear happily tried this ‘new’ style of beer. It was love at first sip.”

Evans says White was pretty popular from the start. But more notable is its staying power, how it remains a hit to this day, 4,000 breweries later. “Allagash White is our number one selling draft beer and has been for at least the last seven years or so,” Evans says. “We may sell more White than any other bar in Maine. That means quite a bit, as it’s competing with 77 other beers—including five others from Allagash.”

White constitutes about 80% of Allagash’s total production. That’s a lot of eggs in one basket. So how they get it into the hands of customers is important. You’d think maybe, what with the seemingly infinite amount of beer options given to drinkers these days, that they'd labor over their strategy. Not so much.

“We don’t really market White,” marketing director Jeff Pillet-Shore says. “We share it. We want people to try it and enjoy it on its own merits. White is certainly our best- and most-widely-known beer. And for so many people, it is the first Allagash beer they ever try. There’s no beer we love more.”