The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution

“Everyone who cares about good beer owes Tom Acitelli a huge thanks: his history of American craft beer is lively, substantive, and thoughtful.”

—Maureen Ogle, author of
Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer

“[Tom Acitelli]'s thorough research into the craft beer revolution tells a great story and shows how a ragtag yet purposeful group of passionate individuals can build an industry. He did an amazing job capturing the characters, improbable tales, and astounding passion that make up the craft brewing community.”

—Ken Grossman, founder, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

“The Audacity of Hops
chronicles the rich history of America's craft brewing revolution with deft portraits of the resourceful pioneers, the innovative brewers, and the intrepid entrepreneurs who are changing the way the world thinks about beer.”

—Steve Hindy, cofounder of Brooklyn Brewery and coauthor of
Beer School

“Tom's narrative threads moments of insider anecdote with a historian's vision of what makes growing, outsider movements so dynamic, meaningful, and, in our case, delicious. An important achievement.”

—Jeremy Cowan, author of
Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah
and proprietor of Shmaltz Brewing

“This book is a delightful read, painstakingly researched, often humorous, and filled with stories that breathe life into the birth of our industry.”

—David L. Geary, president of D. L. Geary Brewing Company

Copyright © 2013 by Tom Acitelli

All rights reserved

First edition

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-388-1

Cover and interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Cover photographs: Michael Halberstadt

Typesetting: PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Acitelli, Tom.

The audacity of hops : the history of America's craft beer revolution / Tom Acitelli. — First edition.

pages cm

Summary: “Charting the birth and growth of craft beer across the United States, Tom Acitelli offers an epic, story-driven account of one of the most inspiring and surprising American grassroots movements. In 1975, there was a single craft brewery in the United States; today there are more than 2,000. Now this once-fledgling movement has become ubiquitous nationwide—there's even a honey ale brewed at the White House. This book not only tells the stories of the major figures and businesses within the movement, but it also ties in the movement with larger American culinary developments. It also charts the explosion of the mass-market craft beer culture, including magazines, festivals, home brewing, and more. This entertaining and informative history brims with charming, remarkable stories, which together weave a very American business tale of formidable odds and refreshing success”— Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-388-1 (pbk.)

1. Beer—United States. I. Title.

TP573.U5A25 2013

641.2'3—dc23

2013002264

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

To my parents

Prologue
:
America, King of Beer
Turin, Italy; Paris; Washington, DC | 2009-2010

PART I

THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST
San Francisco | 1965

DO IT YOURSELF
Dunoon, Scotland; Fairfax County, VA | 1964-1968

BEER FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Okinawa, Japan; Portland, OR | 1970

EDEN, CALIFORNIA
Davis, CA | 1970

TV DINNER LAND
San Francisco | 1970-1971

LITE UP AHEAD
Munich; Brooklyn | 1970-1973

“BREWED THROUGH A HORSE”
Los Angeles; Chicago | 1973-1978

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BEER
San Francisco | 1974-1978

CHEZ MCAULIFFE
Sonoma, CA | 1976

THE BARD OF BEER
London | 1976-1977

LONG DAYS, LONGER
ODDS Sonoma, CA | 1976-1977

PART II

TIPPING POINTS
Boulder, CO; Washington, DC | 1978

“SMALL, HIGH-QUALITY FOOD PLACES”
Sonoma, CA | 1978

THE BEARDED YOUNG MAN FROM CHICO
Chico, CA | 1978

THE FIREMAN AND THE GOAT SHED
Novato, CA; Hygiene, CO | 1979-1980

THE WEST COAST STYLE
Chico, CA | 1979-1981

MAYFLOWER REFUGEE
Boulder, CO; Manhattan | 1981-1984

HOW THE BREWPUB WAS BORN
Yakima, WA | 1981

THE FIRST SHAKEOUT
Sonoma, CA; Novato, CA | 1982-1983

“THAT'S A GREAT IDEA, CHARLIE”
Boulder, CO; Denver | 1982-1984

THE THIRD WAVE BUILDS
Manhattan; Virginia Beach, VA; Portland, OR; Hopland, CA | 1982-1984.

THE LESSON OF THE NYLON STRING
Newton, MA; Boston | 1983-1984

“THIS CONNOISSEUR THING”
Manhattan | 1983-1985

BECAUSE WINE MAKING TAKES TOO LONG
Belmont, CA | 1985

MORE THAN IN EUROPE
Boston; Kalamazoo, MI | 1983-1986

BEER, IT'S WHAT'S WITH DINNER
Washington, DC; Portland, OR | 1983-1987

VATS AND DOGS
San Francisco, CA | 1986-1987

TO THE LAST FRONTIER AND BACK
Juneau, AK; Baltimore; Boston | 1985-1986

WEEPING RADISHES AND SCOTTISH LORDS
Portland, ME; Abita Springs, LA; St. Paul, MN; Manteo, NC | 1985-1986

HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE
Denver|1987

PART III

UNHAPPY MEALS
Rome | 1986

SECOND CAREERS
Brooklyn | 1986

DAVIDS AND GOLIATHS
Boston | 1986

FIVE HUNDRED MILES IN A RENTED HONDA
New Ulm, MN | 1986-1987

NEW YORK MINUTES
Brooklyn; Manhattan | 1987-1988

THE REVOLUTION, TELEVISED
San Francisco; Cleveland; Chicago | 1987-1990

A MANIFESTO AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Venice, Italy | 1990

THE VALUE OF GOLD
Utica, NY | 1991

“THE TYRANNY OF FAST GROWTH”
Baghdad, Iraq; Marin County, CA | 1991-1994

FINDING ROLE MODELS, DEFYING LABELS
Philadelphia; New Glarus, WI; Burlington, VT; Fort Collins, CO | 1991-1993

GHOSTS AROUND THE MACHINES
Washington, DC | 1993

CHERRY BREW AND NAKED HOCKEY
Manhattan | 1992-1993

IN PRIME TIME
San Francisco | 1994

CRITICAL MASS
Durham, NC | 1995

THE POTATO-CHIP EPIPHANY
Kailua-Kona, HI | 1993-1995

THE BREWPUBS BOOM
Denver; Palo Alto, CA | 1993-1995

SUDS AND THE CITY
Brooklyn | 1995

ATTACK OF THE PHANTOM CRAFTS
Denver; St. Louis | 1994-1995

“BUDHOOK” AND THE BULL BEER MARKET
Seattle; Portsmouth, NH; Frederick, MD | 1995-1996

LAST CALL FOR THE OLD DAYS
Hopland, CA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME | 1995-1997

BIG BEER'S BIGGEST WEAPON
Merriam, KS; Chico, CA | 1996

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S COAT
Brooklyn | 1996

TO THE EXTREME
Rehoboth Beach, DE | 1995-1997

THE TOTAL PACKAGE
Petaluma, CA | 1995

BOOS
Boston; Pittsburgh | 1996

THE MOVEMENT'S BIGGEST SETBACK
New York; Philadelphia | 1996

LUCKY BASTARDS
Los Angeles; San Marcos, CA | 1996-1998

A TALE OF TWO BREWERIES
White River Junction, VT; Philadelphia | 1996-2000

THE GREAT SHAKEOUT
Nationwide | 1996-2000

VICTORY ABROAD, DEFEAT AT HOME
Palo Alto, CA; Boston | 1997-2000

PART IV

PLOTTING A COMEBACK
Atlanta | 1998-2000

“MCDONALD'S VERSUS FINE FOOD”
Manhattan | 2000

CRAFT BEER LOGS ON
Boston; San Francisco; Atlanta | 1999-2001

GROWING PAINS AGAIN
Brooklyn; Cleveland | 2000-2003

STILL THE LATEST THING
Guerneville, CA; Oklahoma City, OK; Houston | 2002-2005

CRUSHING IT
Lyons, CO | 2002

WITH GUSTO
Manhattan; Boulder, CO | 2003-2005

A GREAT PASSING
London | 2007

BEER, PREMIUM
Durango, CO; New Orleans | 2006-2008

EXIT THE GODFATHER
San Francisco | 2009-2010

BIG CROWDS AND THE NEW SMALL
Santa Rosa, CA | 2010-2011

“THE ALBION BREWERY”
Sonoma, CA; Denver | 2011-2012

Epilogue:
More Than Ever
2012

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

I
t was the last week in
October 2010, cloudy and cool, and hundreds of thousands of people were streaming toward the Olympic Village in Turin, a united Italy's first capital in the 1860s and the ancestral home of the nation's royal family until after World War II. History had everything and nothing to do with the reason the crowds were gathering: Salone del Gusto, the biannual trade show and tribal gathering of Slow Food, the international movement that grew out of a 1986 protest in Rome over Italy's first McDonald's. Slow Food's show, like the movement itself, was a middle finger to homogenization and mass production. It meant to highlight locally produced, communally enjoyed foodstuffs: cheeses, fish, jams, oils, meats, nuts, legumes, wine, honey, bread—and beer.

The last one was a bit of a surprise to me. The surprise was not that there was beer at the show, but that most of the beer came from Italy, a nation known more in the same breath as France for its varied wines. These included the drier Barolo and Barbera of the north; the heavier, lusher central Italian wines like the Montepulciano in Abruzzo; and the sweeter Nero d'Avola and Marsala of Sicily. Italian beer, though? Whoever heard of the porters of Florence? Or the pale ales of Bologna? The pilsners of Reggio di Calabria? Wrong part of Europe,
signore,
surely—it was supposed to be all blandly industrial Peroni and Moretti. But there they were: Italian-made craft beers, tasting in their complexity and depth very much like the American-made ones I could find back home in Brooklyn.

I would learn that those American craft beers had had a profound influence on the nascent Italian craft beer movement in the 1990s and 2000s, as had American beer figures at that 2010 Salone del Gusto like Sam Calagione, a brewer whom I recognized from an epically detailed
New Yorker
profile published two years before, and Charlie Papazian, an author whom I had just seen at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver the previous month.
They were on a panel together about American influences on Italian beer, where their observations prattled through several near-instantaneous translations into dozens of earphones in a college classroom-like setting.