The five-employee, family-run Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company began making beer in 2006. Since then, the company has grown to approximately 160 employees—about 40 percent of whom have a friend or family connection.
As the founding brewmaster of Full Sail Brewing, and the founder and longtime head of Wyeast Laboratories, David Logsdon carries a huge footprint in the craft industry, especially in the Pacific Northwest. But he made a conscious effort to keep his latest venture, Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, at a modest scale.
COAST Brewing is a tiny brewery run out of an old navy yard in North Charleston, S.C. Its founders, David Merritt and his wife, Jaime Tenney, can only crank out big, hugely creative beers because they first led the campaign to liberalize South Carolina’s brewing regulations.
Christian Ettinger founded Hopworks Urban Brewery on the idea that radical sustainability should be commonplace. The organic, Portland, Ore., brewpub has taken environmentalism further than any brewpub in the country.
Crannóg Ales’ head brewer, Brian MacIsaac, is a very proud Irishman who toured the globe playing bass in the punk band Immoral Minority. Today, instead of mohawks and mosh pits, it’s brewing organic beer that lets him crowdsurf the world.
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.
