The story of how Flying Dog Brewery got its start sounds like the plot of a Hunter S. Thompson book, which is fitting given his involvement in the brewery’s origin. It involves K2, a runaway donkey, alcohol, oxygen deprivation, drugs (or lack thereof) and, of course, a flying dog.

It started in 1983, when Colorado rancher George Stranahan led a group over to Pakistan to climb K2 in the Himalayas.

“The march of the innocent,” said Matt Brophy, Flying Dog’s senior vice president of brewing operations. “They had no idea what they were doing. About one in four people who successfully ascend K2 never make it back down to tell about it, but nobody told them that.”

After much turmoil on the mountain, including losing their Sherpa and the mule carrying their contraband, the group successfully reached the summit. After the descent Stranahan was in a hotel bar in Rawalpini, Pakistan.

“He was out of drugs, badly in need of a drink and deprived of oxygen,” said Brophy. “So he signed an affidavit saying his mother was a Christian so he could drink.

“George is sitting there and he sees a painting by a local Pakistani artist of a flying dog. It was that artist’s interpretation — he had heard Englishmen talking about bird dogs,” Brophy continued. “It was then, in this altered state, that George kind of realized that if this artist can envision this dog to fly, anything is possible. So he really adopted that concept when he came back to Colorado and he renamed his ranch the Flying Dog Ranch.”

In 1990, Stranahan and long-time friend Richard McIntyre decided to open the Flying Dog brewpub in Aspen, Colo. The brewery quickly gained popularity and outgrew the brewpub. The company relocated to Denver and moved into a building formerly known as Silverstate laundry.

“It was actually well-known for cleaning prostitute’s dresses,” said Heather Benton, Flying Dog distribution specialist. “That building was quite old by the time it was a brewery and it started to fall down around them. Then they moved across the street.”

According to Brophy, they moved to a vacant brewery.

“There was a brewer in the late ’90s,Timberline Ales, came down [to Denver] and started what was called Mile High Brewing. They operated in that facility for less than a year before they ran out of money and went under. That facility sat there vacant with the brewhouse, all the fermentors, so it was such a logical move to go from a 30-barrel brewhouse to a 50-barrel brewhouse that is around the corner.”

Flying Dog officially relocated to Frederick, Md., in 2008, and is currently Maryland’s largest brewery.

“We relocated because most of our beer sales have been east of the Mississippi,” said Brophy who started with the company in Denver in 2003. “We started producing beer here in 2006 and on Jan. 15, 2008, the last bottles rolled off the Denver line. Since that day, all of our beer has been produced right here in Frederick.”

The battle for good beer

While the company has been successful, it met some pretty tough challenges along the way.

“George was a longtime friend of Hunter S. Thompson,” said sales and marketing representative J.T. Smith. “They were co-conspirators and friends for over 30 years. Hunter suggested they use artist Ralph Steadman to the art for the labels.”

Steadman is a well-known British artist who illustrated many of Thompson’s articles and later the covers of two of Thompson’s books, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”

“Ralph [Steadman] was being interviewed by BBC television and he was drawing some plates for us and some labels and he decided to write ‘good beer no shit’ on the bottom of the plate — to kind of push the envelope and see if we put it on,” said Smith. “Well he ended up mailing that to Colorado and we received it and thought, ‘good beer no shit’ that’s perfect, that’s us.

“So we immediately slapped it on the Road Dog Porter bottles and the state of Colorado almost immediately ripped it off the shelves citing indecency laws and an almost four year arduous legal battle ensued,” Smith said.

“In the interim it came to say on the bottles, ‘Good beer no censorship’ instead of ‘Good beer no shit’ until the legal battle was over,” said Benton.

“The ACLU finally came to represent us and eventually the Colorado Supreme Court granted us protection under the First Amendment of the Constitution as a freedom of speech issue. To this day we are still proud to say ‘good beer no shit,’ ” said Smith.

“But we still have problems,” said Benton. To celebrate their 20th anniversary Flying Dog released Raging Bitch, a Belgian IPA, which is a strong hybrid beer. The name of the beer has met its own controversy.

“Michigan says it’s indecent and they don’t want it on their shelves — but they are at least responding to us,” said Benton. “New Hampshire is not even answering us. Eddie Edwards [the director of enforcement for the New Hampshire Liquor Commission] in New Hampshire is basically saying, I am the boss and this doesn’t go on the shelves. We just want an answer from them or we just won’t send beer there anymore. You can’t just say — ‘we’re in charge.’ This is America.”

The Gonzo spirit

Twenty years after Flying Dog’s creation, it’s operations and employees still model the company’s original spirit of irreverence: “be original, don’t take any shit, stand for something and live the dream, everyday,” the employees shouted out together.

“I’d say there is pretty much zero-percent chance we’ll ever be in negotiation with Anheuser-Busch,” said Brophy. “Our founder, this is part of his legacy. We’re not publicly owned, we’re a private organization and we’re in it to make remarkable beer and allows brewers to lead the way creatively. But it speaks to the whole organization whether it’s naming Raging Bitch. Everybody had their chance to comment on that. And it’s not bean counters running the company saying, ‘Why are you putting that much hops in Raging Bitch, that’s not economical?’ That never happens here.”

“Maryland recently surpassed Colorado in total Flying Dog sales,” said Brophy. For the company, he added, it means Maryland has really embraced Flying Dog beer. “The thing is, for craft beer on a volume basis represents no more than 5 percent of all beer sold in the U.S. So even to take 1 percent even from the big guys — that’s huge for all craft brewers. One one-hundredth of 1 percent is a huge increase in sales to a very small brewer.

“I think that just reflects American beer drinkers,” Brophy said. “When people realize there is more complexity and flavor, but whatever, it doesn’t have to be the most unique or complex beer in the world, but people have these misconceptions of what craft beer might be.”

Consumer tastes are changing and Flying Dog is representation of the new beer trends.

“Hops, hops, hops for sure and obviously higher ABV [alcohol by volume],” said Smith.

“For guys like me,” said Brophy, “I started home brewing when I was 17, and I looked at all the classic world beer styles and I think that all craft brewers have a tremendous amount of respect for those traditional styles and traditional brewing methods, and you use those as inspiration to come up with new creative beers. But it’s come full circle. A lot of those guys, whether they are the Belgians or the English, are looking at American craft beer now. I think even in the past 10 years or less, American craft brewers have gained an enormous amount of respect in the world brewing cultural scene than ever before.”

The company was awarded mid-size brewery of the year in September 2009 at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver and just took home a silver medal for its Gonzo Imperial Porter last week in Chicago at the World Beer Cup.

According to the employees the awards don’t change much for them.

“We’re still the same group of people doing the same things we’ve always done,” said Brophy. “It’s good recognition because, generally speaking, bad beers don’t win, but there are lots of good beers that don’t win too, so I don’t think that changes a whole lot for us.”