The practice of brewing beer stretches back millennia. But what we call craft beer today began when Fritz Maytag bought San Francisco’s Anchor Brewery in 1965. The decades since have brought such milestones as the founding of New Albion Brewing in Sonoma in 1976 and Sierra Nevada Brewing in Chico in 1980, followed by the opening of thousands of craft breweries across the nation.
For every beer lover who has enjoyed a craft brew sometime in the last five decades, there are people who helped get that beer into your glass. Some of them founded companies, others brewed the beer or brought it to market. The more time passes, the easier it is to forget the names of the people who made our current beer landscape possible. It makes sense to make sure they are remembered and celebrated.
Yes, we’re talking about an American Craft Beer Hall of Fame. Baseball and football have their own halls of fame, as do rock and roll musicians. The wine industry’s Vintners Hall of Fame is housed at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa.
So in late 2023, when Chicago-based beer writer Marty Nachel, author of “Beer for Dummies” and “Homebrewing for Dummies,” realized the beer world didn’t have anything similar, he decided to take it on. He created an advisory board of 50 industry insiders to work out the details for an American Craft Beer Hall of Fame, from solicitingdonations and registering as a nonprofit to crafting rules and standards for the hall and its nominations.
From a pool of nearly 70 possibilities, 23 names were put forward and ballots sent to craft beer professionals across the country. On Feb. 15, the first American Craft Beer Hall of Fame gathering was held virtually, with induction ceremonies streaming from five brewery locations in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Oregon and Milton, Delaware.
Five of the 12 people elected to the hall are from California, which isn’t surprising given the role the state has played in craft beer’s development. So who was elected? Here’s the initial dozen.
Fritz Maytag: The father of craft beer bought San Francisco’s failing Anchor Brewery 60 years ago and turned it into what we think of as a craft brewery today. He revived Steam Beer and other long-forgotten beer styles, introduced many new beers and supported and mentored other local breweries as they grew.
Ken Grossman: The Sierra Nevada Brewing co-founder’s signature Pale Ale, introduced in 1981, defined the new style of American Pale Ale.
Jack McAuliffe, Suzy (now Denison) Stern and Jane Zimmerman: McAuliffeopened the first modern microbrewery, New Albion Brewing, built from scratch inSonoma with help and investment from his friends Stern and Zimmerman, who bothworked at the nascent brewery. The brewery lasted just six years but it showed other early brewers the way.
Other brewery founders inducted include Bert Grant, whose Yakima, Washington brewpub was the nation’s first, and Jim Koch, the man behind the Boston Beer Co. and its signature Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Two inspirational beer writers were inducted, including Michael Jackson, the UK beer advocate who invented the taxonomy of our modern beer styles, and Portland homebrewing advocate and writer Fred Eckhardt.
Another home-brew champion inducted into the hall of fame was Charlie Papazian, the author of “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” and founder of the American Homebrewers Association, the Brewers Association and the Great American Beer Festival.
Rounding out the list: Charles and Rose Ann Finkel, who founded Merchant du Vin, which imported numerous world-class beers from Europe in a variety of styles and inspired an entire generation of brewers to make their own versions. The diverse beer scene showcased by more than 9,000 American breweries today can be traced back to that inspiratio
n.
You’ll be hearing more about these people and these efforts soon. Just before the first inductees were announced, I accepted the invitation to become the official historian and biographer of the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame. You can read more about the hall and its inductees at americancraftbeerhalloffame.com now and in the coming years, as more and more pioneers are added and a fuller picture emerges of the history of craft beer across the nation and right here in the Bay Area.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.