Partly cloudy skies early followed by scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 68F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..
Partly cloudy skies early followed by scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 68F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Jack McAuliffe is one of the pioneers of American craft brewing, writes columnist Matt Thomas.
Jack McAuliffe is one of the pioneers of American craft brewing, writes columnist Matt Thomas.
With the likes of Bell’s Brewing and Stone Brewing selling their American Craft Legacy brands to foreign interests, it’s time to pause and look back at just how much beer has changed in less than 50 years in America.
Independent American brewers and beer drinkers are indebted to a long list of pioneers, dating back into the 1960s. Fritz Maytag saving Anchor Brewing from closing in 1965, English writer Michael Jackson, Craft Beer entrepreneur Jack McAuliffe, Home Brewing advocate and founder of the Association of Brewers Charlie Papazian, Sierra Nevada founders Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi, long-time Brewmaster Burt Grant and Boston Beer’s founder Jim Koch are some of the most important names in shaping what beer is today. Let’s look at just one of those trailblazers in this article, Jack McAuliffe.
McAuliffe became interested in brewing beer both while stationed in Scotland serving in the U.S. Navy, as well as at home in the San Francisco Bay area from Fritz Maytag’s Anchor Brewing. He was an optical engineer in Silicon Valley following graduating college in 1971. McAuliffe studied the business of brewing and the mechanics of what it took to create a new brewery. This was a particularly tall order in the early 1970s, as the American brewing scene was non-existent; there were less than 80 breweries in the nation and home brewing was still a federal crime.
McAuliffe turned to the resources at The University of California at Davis. It is there that he met Professor Michael Lewis (who would later advise Ken Grossman with the opening of Sierra Nevada Brewing), which helped to develop a functional brewing and business plan.
The original intent was to build a new brewery in San Francisco, with a working name of Barbary Coast Brewing Company, however a lack of investors and the high cost of real estate forced changes to his plans.
By 1975, McAuliffe left the Silicon Valley, moving north to Sonoma. At this time, real estate was vastly cheaper than in San Francisco and an emerging artisanal food and wine was taking root. McAuliffe was able to secure business partners Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, and in October 1976, The New Albion Brewing Company opened its doors.
The brewery was a three-level steel warehouse so that it could use gravity to feed the liquid down from one level to another, in a similar manner of old Bavarian and British breweries. Everything that was used to produce and package the beer was unique to the facility. Used Coca-Cola 55-gallon syrup drums were converted into brew kettles and fermenters, a World War II era bottle washer was made from battleship decking, and the bottle labeler was vintage 1910.
New Albion was able to produce 7.5 barrels a week, bottling by hand and bottle conditioned. The brewery produced a pale ale, porter and stout. The brewery garnered widespread praise for their beers, quickly selling out every week. New Albion gained national attention with articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. Unfortunately, even with all of the critical success, the company was never able to grow enough to turn a profit, and closed operations in November 1982.
What New Albion proved was that there was a market for quality beer. Jack McAuliffe created a blueprint for aspiring brewers to follow, laying the cornerstone of the craft beer industry today. Independent beer titans Sierra Nevada and Boston Brewing have both brewed beers with Jack. Sierra’s 30th Anniversary Ale was a collaboration brew of Jack McAuliffe and Ken Grossman. Samuel Adams purchased the rights to New Albion around 2010 and resurrected the original New Albion Pale Ale in 2012, brewed by Jim Koch and Jack McAuliffe.
From this one brewery, at a point that the United States had the number of working breweries shrink to only 44 nationwide, to today, where there are more than 10,000 breweries and Craft Beer contributed $62.1 billion to the U.S. economy and more than 400,000 jobs as of 2020, Jack McAuliffe’s impact can not be overstated.
MATT THOMAS is a cicerone, certified beer server and certified bourbon server with Gays Hops-N-Schnapps.
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