How the PH1 barrel became a legend in America’s craft beer scene

CHICAGO — John Laffler is nervous about making his mark on American brewing history.

On a Thursday afternoon in mid-May, Laffler holds an electric branding iron over an upright barrel in a backroom of his Lincoln Park brewery. The barrelhead is acned with 55 expressions of the same half-dollar-sized logo: off color brewing in lowercase script around Mischief, the establishment’s grain mouse mascot. Some of the marks are so dark that the scorched lettering bleeds together; others so light as to be almost invisible.