Since launching Victory in 1996, Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet have remained true to their founding principles. When it came time to expand, they added a second production facility in Pennsylvania even as their distribution has grown.
Temperance Row holds a nostalgic place in brewing history with timeless beers and an iconic brewmaster in a small town in central Ohio that was dry for 148 years.
Wild Beer’s careful, considered way of doing things—harvesting native yeasts, implementing uncommon ingredients, blending, aging, experimenting—makes this remote operation one of the most forward-thinking craft breweries England has ever seen.
Mark and Leslie Henderson founded Lazy Magnolia to bring better beer to their home state. Although Mississippi now has 10 breweries statewide, theirs was the first packaging brewery to carry the torch for craft brewing, and did so for seven years under previously restrictive state regulations.
Bale Breaker Brewing is the creation of siblings Meghann Quinn, Patrick Smith and Kevin Smith, whose family started growing hops in Washington’s Yakima Valley back in 1932. They founded Bale Breaker in 2013, with help from Kevin Quinn, Meghann’s husband.
In 2011, David Stein boldly proclaimed that he would make the best beer Atlanta had to offer. When Creature Comforts opened in Athens, the prophecy came true, in a way. The brewery is one of the most raved about in Georgia.
Michael Kane started making beer in college. The summer after his sophomore year, he traveled throughout Europe and became enamored with cask-conditioned ESBs, Lambics, Hefeweizens. Back in the US, weekend pilgrimages to newly opened breweries cemented his career aspirations.
From its brewhouse in Hood River—a Silver LEED certified building with a roof covered in solar panels and a rainwater collection system for irrigation—pFriem is melding European tradition with American ingenuity using tools unfamiliar to most small craft breweries.
NOLA Brewing’s stewardship of the craft scene, focus on high-quality beer, and investment in the community has led to explosive growth in a city that had all but abandoned its historical designation as the Brewery Capital of the South.
Inspiration for Modus Operandi struck when Grant and Jaz Wearin embarked on a great American road trip that kicked off in Colorado, continued through the rolling mountains of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and then wound back down the West Coast.
The distance between Peekskill’s old and new homes is only two-tenths of a mile, but their differences are dramatic. The latter features a 15-barrel brewhouse and a 16-draft taproom on the first floor, with a 65-seat restaurant and another 16 drafts pouring on the second floor.
For much of the year, Healy, Alaska, is a sleepy place. But from mid-May until mid-October things get rather busy, especially at Healy’s lone brewery, 49th State.
Since 2009 Galway Bay has grown from supplying one bar with two beers to supplying nine bars in Galway and Dublin. Much of this success can be traced back to 2012, when the partners hired a 21-year-old biotechnology graduate with no professional brewing experience.
Figueroa Mountain’s CEO and founder, Jaime Dietenhofer, knew out of high school that he wanted to start a brewery. But his parents and eventual co-founders, Jim and Judie, said, “Go to college.”
Glutenberg, based in Montreal, Québec has a simple, yet formidable, mission: to make beer that’s not only good gluten-free beer, but good beer, period. This ambitious attitude drives the young brewery to experiment with new techniques and embrace and highlight gluten-free grains.
The focus on hops at Toppling Goliath has been there from the beginning. It wasn’t an obvious fit at first. Iowa wasn’t known for boundary-pushing brews. And tiny Decorah is nestled among the rolling hills of northeastern Iowa’s Driftless Region, a rural area of small farms and small towns.
The 20-year-old, Hew Hampshire operation Smuttynose Brewing Company moved in 2014 from a cramped and thoroughly analog brewery to a new facility featuring state-of-the art equipment.
KBC’s location in central Lihue might seem problematic. Once bustling with activity as the hub of Kauai’s sugarcane industry, the area fell into decline, leaving behind a mix of used car lots alongside insurance, legal and government offices. In this landscape, KBC is a bright spot, helping revive downtown Lihue.
Since starting in 2012, Scott Hedeen’s passion project—a nanobrewery tucked into a small industrial park in northern Georgia—has been invited to events like Chicago Beer Week and Hunahpu’s Day at Cigar City.
Brevnovský Pivovar has an annual production of about 2,500 barrels. Most of that is its Pale Lager, but it also makes an Imperial Stout, a Baltic Porter and an IPA, all rarities in lager-loving central Europe. For the moment, however, none of the brewery’s beers are regularly exported out of the Czech Republic.
Inspired by the successes of Bay Area breweries, Phil Bannatyne, a New Englander by birth, moved back to the East Coast in the late 1980s planning to get into the beer business. The space he could afford turned out to be in Kendall Square, a stone’s throw from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As the brewmaster at Wind River Brewing Co. in Pinedale, Wyo., Richard Strom was ushered into the industry by his father, David, who was the first independent craft beer distributor in Portland, Ore.
Founder and owner Chris Michner chose Grand Haven, Mich., for the site of Odd Side Ales, settling on a suite in a converted Story & Clark piano factory. The whole idea behind the brewery was to make “unusual ales” that feature offbeat ingredients and bold flavors to intrigue the palate.
