Hugh Sisson has been hawking good beer for nearly 30 years now. In the last few of those, he’s finally made Clipper City into the brewery he always envisioned it to be—Great American Beer Fest gold medals and all.
In a dozen-odd years of professional brewing, Weyerbacher Brewing Company’s Dan Weirback has traded restrained English-style Ales for big, brawling Belgians, bourbon barrels, and imperialized… well, whatever he can make an Imperial, he will.
“I make beers that I want to drink. That’s the bottom line,” Avery says. “I love our IPA because I made the IPA for me—that’s the style of IPA I like. I always say: I’m making the beer for me; I’m just making a little extra for everybody else.”
Ten years ago, Vinnie Cilurzo and his wife, Natalie, brought aggressively hopped beer to the heart of California’s wine country. Since then, they’ve taken Russian River Brewing Company independent, won an unimaginable number of awards and launched a revolutionary line of barrel-aged sour Belgians.
Just six months after their launch, Terrapin struck gold at the 2002 Great American Beer Festival: The only beer in their line, Rye Pale Ale, bested 92 other beers and took the gold medal as the country’s best American Pale Ale.
Founders Brewing Company brews the kind of beers its brewers want to drink, and by gleefully smashing every convention it can get its hands on, the brewery has gained a rabid following.
In less than a year and a half of brewing, Surly Brewing Company, a tiny Brooklyn Center, MN brewery, has already put the industry’s big boys on notice.
Greg Koch and Steve Wagner first brewed their flagship beer, Arrogant Bastard, back in 1995, a full year before they co-founded Stone, and two years before the beer’s commercial release.
The craft brewery Larry Bell founded on a Kalamazoo, MI stovetop, Bell’s Brewery, is the oldest east of Boulder. And while the craft brewing landscape has filled in considerably since its founding, Bell’s has retained its pioneering spirit.
How do you celebrate fifteen Great American Beer Festival medals and back-to-back GABF Small Brewery Brewer of the Year nods? You open up a new brewing and bottling plant, and start distribution of two new lines of beer.
