The Craft Beer Movement was hitting its stride in 1995, and a wholly new beer culture was emerging around America.

By Stan Hieronymus

(This article appears in the Fall 2010 issue of The Beer Connoisseur. Support BC by subscribing here.)

The beer headlines of 1995 screamed change.

“MILLER BREWING BUYS STAKE IN CELIS BREWERY”

“CRAFT BEER SALES INCREASE BY 70%”

“BOSTON BEER STOCK SOARS 65% IN FIRST DAYs OF TRADING”

Fifteen years after Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi began selling their Sierra Nevada beers in 1980, America’s beer renaissance demanded attention. In that sense, 1995 was hardly different than the year before or the one after, but taking a closer look at bits and pieces from that single year reveals a measure of history that was not yet obvious. American beer was not returning to some place it had been previously. A new beer culture had emerged and with it new beers, often unlike any brewed before and certainly unlike any made in America.

 

DAN WEIRBACK begins his 30-minute morning commute in the rolling hills northwest of Fogelsville, Pa., on blacktop roads that lead to Interstate 78. Driving east to the town of Easton, where he started Weyerbacher Brewing in 1995, he passes a sprawling brewery that was “the world’s most modern brewery” when the F&M Schaefer Brewing Co. built it in 1972. Schaefer, founded in 1842, was then still the fifth largest brewing company in the country.

From the time the Stroh Brewery bought Schaefer lock, brand and brewery in 1981, ongoing change at the complex reflected the upheaval in American brewing. Boston Beer contracted with Stroh to have Samuel Adams products brewed there from 1994 to 2001. That was never simple, because the processes for making Sam Adams beers and adjunct lagers like Stroh’s and the other brands it sold were much different. Pabst owned the plant briefly before giving up making any of its own beer. Diageo North America then produced Smirnoff Ice in the gorgeous copper vessels. And in 2008 Boston Beer acquired the brewery for itself.

When Weirback started his comparatively tiny brewery anything seemed possible – and sometimes it was. One of 196 brewpubs that opened in 1995, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware grew quite famously from an operation where founder Sam Calagione made 12 gallons at a time to one of the 20 largest craft breweries in the country (expecting to produce an estimated one-third of a million gallons this year).

One of 91 new microbreweries in 1995, Kona Brewing also blossomed into a top-20 brewery, despite being located in rather distant Hawaii. In Montana, the nation’s 48th most densely populated state, Big Sky Brewing’s sales rocketed because of its cleverly named Moose Drool Brown Ale. Breweries such as Midnight Sun in Alaska, AleSmith in Southern California and Weyerbacher did not become as large, but their beers developed cult followings.

That wasn’t Weirback’s original plan. He expected his easy drinking beers – drawing upon British tradition, including both the ingredients and process – to reach a wide audience, and he anticipated that the brewery would sell tens of thousands of 31-gallon barrels, maybe even a hundred thousand, a year. “Boy, did I have a lot to learn,” Weirback said recently, smiling at his own youthful optimism.

Wearing a T-shirt, shorts and boots, he’d helped on the bottling line that morning last spring. Now he took a drink from a bottle labeled Verboten and explained how his business plan evolved, why his brewery could be much smaller than he expected – producing about 6,000 barrels this year – and still profitable. 

“Our edge is esoteric styles, unique beers,” he said. Every two months the brewery releases a new draft beer, which may be brewed only one time or could become a regular offering. Each is named using the NATO phonetic alphabet. Verboten – 5.9 percent ABV, fermented with yeast from Belgium and bittered and flavored with American Northwest hops – was first called Alpha. Weyerbacher beers often feature more intense flavors than others, sometimes because they are aged in wood or with wild yeast strains.

 “These were the (type of) beers I enjoyed making as a homebrewer, the ones I like to drink. I had an idea this would be a good way to go, but I didn’t know how much potential it had,” he said, explaining the evolution. “It’s not like it was a grand strategy. It was the only thing that kept the doors open month to month (in 1997 and 1998).”

When Weirback introduced Hops Infusion India Pale Ale in 1998, the blend of seven hops delivered unexpected and complex hop flavors and aromas as well as bitterness. He and Chris Wilson, the head brewer, reformulated the recipe in 2006. “It needed to come up to speed with the rest of the industry,” Weirback said. “It had become way under-hoppy, although it was the same beer.”

 

JUDGES AT THE 1995 GREAT AMERICAN BEER FESTIVAL in Denver handed out medals in 37 categories, fewer than half the number contested today. They weren’t designed to accommodate wood-aged beers, sour beers or imperial beers; not even imperial stouts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Weirback’s hop-infused Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton, Pa., is one of the number of notable breweries founded in 1995 (photo by Stan Hieronymus).

 

Nonetheless, brewers poured those sorts of beers and drinkers found them. In Booth II-14, Vinnie Cilurzo served the first commercial “Double IPA” anybody ever heard of. He brewed the beer in June of 1994, his first batch at Blind Pig Brewing in Temecula, Calif. He aged it on oak for nine months and served it on the brewery’s first anniversary as “Inaugural Ale.” It was 15 months old when he hauled it to GABF. Eight years later 39 breweries entered their beers in the new Imperial IPA category. That included Cilurzo’s Pliny the Elder, a much different Double IPA that he first made at Russian River Brewing in 1999.

Right around the corner in II-16, Goose Island Brewing from Chicago introduced Bourbon County Stout to its widest audience yet. The brewmaster, Greg Hall, created the beer to celebrate the brewpub’s 1,000th batch, aging an imperial stout for 100 days in whiskey barrels. He took it to Denver for the first time in 1995 and Fred Eckhardt – the dean of American beer writers – quickly proclaimed it the best beer he had ever tasted at GABF.  The judges apparently weren’t as impressed. Bourbon County Stout earned an honorable mention as a “strong ale.” Today there are four wood- and barrel-aged categories at GABF, and a Goose Island warehouse designed to hold 1,200 bourbon barrels sits nearly full.

At six-foot-eight, Kinney Baughman first attracted as much as attention at the festival as the beers he was pouring for Cottonwood Grille & Brewery in North Carolina. Then drinkers got a taste, and they began to spread the word about his two raspberry beers. Both were wild and tart, rich with  “Carolina culture.” The Belgian Amber Framboise won a bronze medal in the Belgian-Style Specialty Ales category, although Baughman liked the Black Framboise even better.

 

 

Back in the mid-’90s, Kinney Baughman, left, made inspired ales in a brick ranch house behind the now-defunct Cottonwood Brewery’s restaurant in Boone, N.C., with some help from Cam Hedrick, right.

 

 

 

Baughman discovered he loved beer in the 1970s while playing professional basketball in Belgium. He began brewing at home in 1980 after he returned to the United States. He also developed and sold homebrewing equipment while working at Appalachian State University. Cottonwood didn’t recruit him to brew sour Belgian beers in Boone, but to clean up an infected brewery. “The stuff was awful,” Baughman said. “They couldn’t give it away.” 

He soon had to expand the brewery. “We were running out of kegs,” he said. He grabbed a few five-gallon kegs, some with beer still in them, from a personal stash that had been lying around for several years. Baughman didn’t realize the cleanser he used before putting fresh beer in them wouldn’t kill all the Pediococcus bacteria that had grown in the kegs. When the beers he put in those kegs started to taste tart he knew immediately what had happened.

 “Anybody else probably would have thrown them out,” he said. But he remembered beers he had tasted in Belgium. He understood the difference between a foul infection and the magical flavors wild yeast strains and bacteria can produce. So he began to blend, experimenting with different portions of tart beer, beer that hadn’t been near the infected kegs and raspberries. “I thought it was time to show Boone what a Belgian beer tasted like,” he said.

Baughman, who is now the director of information technology at Appalachian State, left Cottonwood not long after and brewing altogether a few years later. Carolina Beer Company bought the Cottonwood brand name and still produces a variety of its recipes. That doesn’t include either of the framboise beers, but memories linger for those who tasted them in 1995.

 

BOSTON BEER CO. AND PETE’S BREWING CO. together sold about 1.3 million barrels of beer in 1995, almost all of it brewed under contract. Not long after the two companies went public their combined market capitalization reached about $570 million. At the time Coors – which has since merged with Molson and become affiliated with Miller Brewing – brewed 20 million barrels of beer, owned its own breweries and had a market cap of $725 million. The math may not have exactly made sense, but everybody wanted a piece of the craft beer action.

Miller tried a shortcut, buying a stake in two up-and-coming, not-so-micro breweries, Shipyard Brewing in Maine and the Celis Brewery in Texas. Neither partnership worked as Miller hoped. Shipyard’s founders, Fred Forsley and Alan Pugsley, soon bought their brewery back, and it continues to prosper. Pierre Celis and his family chose to exercise an option that required Miller to purchase the rest of the Celis Brewery in 2000. Miller shut it down not long after, selling the equipment and the Celis brand name to Michigan Brewing.

The obvious child wasn’t always so obvious. Coors made an initially small investment in developing Blue Moon Belgian White Ale and waited years for it to pay off.  Keith Villa, who was in charge of new product development, and Jim Sabia, who worked in the marketing department, were given the task of launching the brand on a shoestring. They had no marketing budget, no distribution deal and no place to brew their beer. For the first few years Blue Moon was brewed under contract like several other craft beers but eventually grew big enough for Coors (now MillerCoors) to brew itself.  

“The tough part was getting people to try a cloudy beer,” Villa said. He sent out a memo suggesting accounts garnish the glass with an orange. Problem was that bars had only lemons and limes, often to put in the neck of a Corona beer. “Nobody had oranges back then,” Villa said. “We’d show up at accounts with a bag of oranges and tell them how to do it. Pretty soon people were calling us asking, ‘Where’s my bag of oranges?’”

 

 

LEFT Ska Brewing’s Graham back in the Durango, Colo., brewery’s first year.

 

 

 

 

Blue Moon White – now backed by television advertising, although many consumers don’t know Coors owns the brand – grew into the biggest selling wheat beer in the country’s history. 

In 1995, Boston Beer and Pete’s together accounted for about 31 percent of craft beer sales. With the purchase of the Fogelsville, Pa., brewery, Boston Beer completed the transformation from a company that paid to have most its beer made in other breweries to one that owns those kettles. Pete’s, a strong No. 2 in 1995, today doesn’t even rank among the top 50 largest craft breweries. The company sold almost 350,000 barrels in 1995 and just 20,000 in 2009, and it never did own its own brewery.

When two longtime friends started Ska Brewing in southwest Colorado they certainly would not have predicted they’d sell as much beer as Pete’s. Their brewery likely won’t this year, but sales have reached about 15,000 barrels, and the new $4.2 million facility they opened in 2009 has room to expand. Dave Thibodeau and Bill Graham partook of the giddiness even before they turned a hobby into a business in 1995. They labeled their homebrewed beer from “Ska Brewing” because they played ska music while they made it, and the duo understood the budding beer culture because they were part of it. 

 “You could see the beginning of the shakeout,” Thibodeau said. “There were people rushing in… They didn’t have the passion.”

 

BELOW  Clockwise from left, Mike Young, Graham and Thibodeau in the original Ska brewhouse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thibodeau and Graham were cautious, keeping their day jobs, meeting at 5 o’clock each afternoon to begin brewing, and then often working until 3 a.m. “Thank god we were as young as we were,” said Thibodeau, now in his early 40s. Matt Vincent, Ska’s third partner, helped out in those early days before buying a share of ownership later that first year.

LEFT  Ska’s new brewery opened in 2009. 

BELOW LEFT  From left, Vincent, Thibodeau and Graham have made Ska a big name in the craft beer world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ska is now one of four breweries in Durango – a town of about 15,000 – all of which members of the Bootlegger’s Society, which was initially formed to raise money in support of community causes. Their first event was a “Pint for Pint” blood drive (rewarding blood donors with a pint of beer) that’s since been emulated by blood services organizations throughout the country.

The foundation was laid even before Ska began brewing, as Ska was just an idea when Thibodeau and Graham were introduced to Bill Carver, who already ran a successful brewpub in town. When they told him what they were thinking about, Carver looked his potential competitors over for just a moment. “We’ll put you guys on tap,” he said. 

“We’ve been a guest tap at Carver’s for 15 years,” said Thibodeau, making it clear Ska started more than a brewery in 1995. “That set a precedent for how we’d run our business.”

 

 

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1995 Production of Largest Craft Breweries That Opened After 1980

(List does not include brewers whose beers were produced under contract that year, such as Boston Beer and Pete’s Brewing):

1. Sierra Nevada Brewing 201,374 barrels

2. Redhook Ale Brewery 158,500

3. Hart Brewing Co. (Pyramid) 123,100

4. Full Sail Brewing 71,500

5. Widmer Brewing 70,000

6. Portland Brewing 62,622

7. Nor’Wester Brewing 32,911

8. Rockies (Boulder) Brewing  32,500

9. New Belgium Brewing 31,668

10. Abita Brewing 31,500

11. Deschutes Brewing 30,500

12. Shipyard Brewing 30,500

13. Alaskan Brewing   22,242

14. Boulevard Brewing 20,823

15. Celis Brewery 20,000

16. Summit Brewing 19,866

17. Rogue Ales 19,000

18. Humboldt Brewing 18,900

19. Catamount Brewing 18,700

20. Mendocino Brewing 15,147

Source: Modern Brewery Age Magazine

 

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 A Craft Beer History Quiz

Q:

1 - On June 13, 1995, the first draft beer from a Belgian specialty brewer was poured in the United States.

Where did this happen and what was the beer?

2 - In 1995 this brewer took his first professional brewing job at Grizzly Peak Brewing in Michigan. 

Who was the brewer and what brewery did he later found?

3 - What beer took the gold medal as a “strong ale,” finishing ahead of Bourbon County Stout at the Great American Beer Festival in 1995, and what was the story behind its name?

4 - On June 30, 1994, this brewer quit his job at Otter Creek Brewing in Vermont. 

One year later he sold the first keg at his new brewery. Who was he and what’s the brewery?

5 - This was the largest draft-only brewery in the Western Hemisphere in 1995, a claim it had to give up when it began bottling. What was the brewery and where is it located?

 

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A:

1 - At a beer dinner at Copa Too! in Philadelphia. The beer was Kwak. The next April Copa Too! hosted a mini-Belgian festival with 18 Belgian and Dutch specialties.

2 - Ron Jeffries. Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter, Mich.

3 - Dog Spit Stout from O’Ryan’s Tavern & Brewery in southern New Mexico (no longer operating). Legend states the beer got its name when it was born as a homebrew and the family pet drooled into the wort. Fortunately this did not evolve into a new category at the GABF.

4 - Rob Tod, Allagash Brewing.

5 - Widmer Brothers Brewing in Portland, Ore.