Editor’s Note: All About Beer editor John Holl had the chance to interview Jack McAuliffe on several occasions and was present at both his 2010 brewday at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, CA and at the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery in 2012. Jack McAuliffe died on July 15, 2025 at the age of 80. This article is an excerpt from Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint, which was published in 2017. Some data points, job titles, and changes have been for this reprinting.
How did we get to our current beer renaissance? Have you heard the theory that butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the planet can create the wind that will become a hurricane on the other? In the case of modern beer in America, Jack McAuliffe is the butterfly.
If you were to draw a line from the craft beer industry in America today back to its beginning, that line, despite any sharp turns, dips, and rises would lead directly back to Jack McAuliffe. In 1976 McAuliffe, Suzy Stern, and Jane Zimmerman founded the New Albion Brewing Co. and in a relatively short period changed the course of brewing in this country, and therefore worldwide, reviving a once proud tradition that had sadly fallen into obscurity.
The late 1970s were an interesting time for beer. Homebrewing had become legal again, thanks to a law Jimmy Carter signed in 1978 that removed the tax on beer made at homes for personal use. It was one of the last provisions on the Federal level left from Prohibition. In garages, basements, and backyards across America creative souls fired up burners and began mixing ingredients from recipes that had been largely abandoned by large brewing companies, who had chosen to focus on mass-produced lagers.
These homebrewers tried their hands at saison, porter, and barleywine, bringing long lost flavors back to enthusiasts and those looking for something more than the generic one-size-fits-all lagers that dominated American shelves and taps. Change, however, was starting to creep in, both domestic and international. Imported lagers—which stood out thanks to their unusual green bottles in an otherwise sea of brown—and other specialty beers brewed overseas were starting to make shy appearances in American stores.
It was in Europe, where professional brewing had operated uninterrupted for hundreds of years, that McAuliffe learned to both appreciate good beer and to brew it. A naval engineer stationed in Scotland and working on submarines, he frequented the local pubs, trying all the ales—especially stouts and porters—on offer. Interested in expanding his horizons beyond just drinking, he applied a practical method to his hobby, devouring every brewery book he could get his hands on. He eventually walked into a Boots pharmacy and purchased a ready-to-go homebrew kit. McAuliffe took it back to his rented house, mixed up the packaged ingredients in water, and let it sit and ferment. When it was ready to drink, he shared it with his fellow sailors and they would give him notes for his next batch. It was this combination of communal gathering and ingenuity that appealed to him.
New Albion is born
When McAuliffe left the Navy and returned to the United States, he headed west and landed in Sonoma, California where he picked up work building houses and laid plans for opening a brewery. He consulted textbooks and magazines at the University of California at Davis, the country’s premiere brewing school, and put together his own beers—a pale ale, a porter, and a stout—based on historical recipes.
With just a few thousand dollars, and alongside his girlfriend and business partners Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, he opened the New Albion Brewery Company in 1977 inside a rented shack of a warehouse in Sonoma. Unable to find manufacturers that made brew kettles, fermenters, and other brewing equipment that would fit his modest size, this man who spent half of his high school years in a welding shop went ahead and manufactured his own brewery from stainless steel equipment that had once been part of dairy farms and soda manufacturing that he picked up on the cheap… or just picked up.
He also manufactured his brewery’s history. There had been an Albion Brewing Co. operating in San Francisco before Prohibition, and he laid claim to their legacy with a label created by a local designer. It showed Sir Francis Drake’s ship the Golden Hind sailing through the mountains of San Francisco’s bay against a baby blue label with sweeping script.
“History is important in the brewing industry,” McAuliffe told me in 2011 “But if you don’t have a history you can just make one up. We made English style ale, porter, and stout. The New Albion Brewing Company, get it? Name, logo and history, bang!”
A barrel of beer contains 31.5 gallons. McAuliffe’s system could make one and a half barrels at a time. Compare that with, say, Schlitz in Milwaukee, which around the same time was making nearly 9 million barrels of beer per year. That wasn’t uncommon. The majority of the breweries operating at the time (save for a few like San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co.) were large, hulking factories turning out millions of barrels of beer—and were unlikely to make it onto anyone’s vacation itinerary.
New Albion gets noticed
Enthusiasts who heard through word-of-mouth or in local news articles regularly drove to the brewery to try this unique small-batch beer that was made with just water (trucked in because the site didn’t have a well), hops, malt (that was processed at the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco because suppliers didn’t deal with businesses the size of McAuliffe’s) and yeast. In short order the national press took notice, with both the Washington Post and the New York Times coming out to write up on this new upstart in brewing.
Those articles helped inspire others around the country to take up arms against the larger brewers and mark the return of local brewing to the United States. However, there are three people in particular who showed up at New Albion in those early days who would in turn help change the course of American brewing.
The first was Dr. Michael Lewis, a professor at U.C. Davis who had helped McAuliffe early on with research and other information as he sought to launch the brewery. Once it opened Lewis drove there to see what McAuliffe had created.
Prior to 1977 the brewing program at the large California university had existed to train students—mostly men—how to brew on a very large scale. There were only 50 or so breweries operating in the United States at the time, the majority of which were cranking out millions of barrels. The breweries were owned by companies like Coors, Miller, and of course Anheuser-Busch. The beers being produced, with only a few exceptions, were in the American lager style: essentially that beer-flavored beer.
The graduates of this program were more likely to be working in white lab coats with sophisticated equipment that dealt more with large-scale manufacturing and precision science than with artistic expression. When Lewis saw what McAuliffe had fabricated, as well as the wild consumer response, he worked to change the school curriculum to accommodate those that wanted to work at smaller breweries or to start their own. Today there are dozens of brewing schools around the country, along with countless programs at colleges and universities that teach brewing. These schools have created the labor force for the craft beer movement. In fact, current graduates of the U.C. Davis program are more likely to work at a small brewery than a large one.
Lewis told me that McAuliffe “certainly changed my view of what the industry could be. I saw a new direction for the industry and a new direction for my program. Jack was the beginning of that.”
The beginning of the assistant craft brewer
The second important person to show up at McAuliffe’s door was Don Barkley, a young man who had started homebrewing in high school and was thinking of a career in brewing. He showed up one morning in the office of New Albion and stated his intentions to work. For free. For the summer. McAuliffe—who I’ll politely describe as gruff in this (and other situations)—told Barkley to leave.
Undeterred, Barkley persisted. He returned later to find Stern. By this point the pair had been working 80-hour weeks with few breaks. Free labor would be just fine, she said, overruling Jack. Barkley was paid with a case of beer per week, along with bottles on the job as desired. He pitched a tent on the property and promptly went about working long hours in cramped conditions. Officially known as the assistant brewer, in reality he did whatever was asked of him—from keg and bottle washing to sweeping the floors. And he did it cheerfully, grateful for the experience.
Barkley is the true patron saint of assistant brewers in this country. He’s the inspiration for so many young people looking to forge a career in the industry to grab their bootstraps and make it happen. Barkley spent the majority of the rest of his career working at Mendocino Brewing, and is still involved with various brewing projects, and as a mentor, training and teaching the proceeding generations.
Grossman is inspired
We’re nearing 9,600 breweries in the country now. In my many conversations with brewers I’ve often asked about the first beer that inspired them, that introduced them to flavor and the promise of something more than beer flavored beer. The majority, again and again, have pointed to Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s pale ale. The soft blend of caramel, malt, and two-row malt with Perle, Magnum, and Cascade hops is an American classic. Originally (and still) served in a heritage 12-ounce bottle with a distinctive green label that clearly states “Purist Ingredients. Finest Quality.” Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was co-founded in 1980 by Ken Grossman, who is the third important person that walked through the New Albion doors. While Grossman’s beers have inspired countless brewers, he himself, of course, was originally inspired by McAuliffe.
Grossman discovered homebrewing when he was a teenager, thanks to a neighbor, and had always been fascinated with engineering and mechanics. He traveled from Chico, his hometown in northern California, to tour New Albion in Sonoma and in examining the three level, gravity-fed brewhouse that McAuliffe had constructed, Grossman realized that he had seen similar equipment close to home and that he too could create something similar.
Later, Grossman would say he didn’t remember much else about the tour (McAuliffe said he didn’t remember him at all) except for the noticeable hop content in the beer. Nonetheless, afterwards he pulled together about $50,000, created his own brewery, and began selling beer around Chico. Commitment and dedication to quality control, with a boost from the lessening of some state laws that allowed for beer and food service at breweries, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company began to grow. Today it’s the third largest craft brewery in the country, behind D.G. Yuengling and Son and the Boston Beer Company. Last year it made 1.4 million barrels of beer at both its original location and a relatively new brewery it constructed in 2015 in Mills River, North Carolina.
In comparison, in 1980, New Albion’s best production year, it topped out at 450 barrels. McAuliffe was never quite able to grow the brewery enough to become financially viable. After just five years he shuttered his brewery doors.
McAuliffe leaves professional brewing
His equipment, along with Barkley, headed north to the Mendocino Brewery. Other parts of the New Albion business were scattered to the wind. The original brewery sign now hangs above the bar, in a spot of honor, in the tap room of the Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa California. McAuliffe visited several years ago and signed it.
McAuliffe left brewing and was largely forgotten as the industry that he inspired took off without him. He worked various engineering jobs and occasionally made moonshine, but stayed out of the beer industry and spotlight.
Grossman, however, always remembered. When it came time to celebrate his brewery’s 30th anniversary he reached out to McAuliffe, who was living in Austin, Texas, and asked him to brew a special beer. Grossman even went so far as to fly to Texas and ask him in person. In a scene not unlike McAuliffe’s first encounter with Barkley, McAuliffe told the younger brewer to leave. Undeterred, Grossman eventually convinced the pioneer to return to the brewhouse.
2010 Brewday at Sierra Nevada
In May 2010 McAuliffe professionally brewed again for the first time. He arrived the morning of the brew day wearing jeans and a short-sleeved blue oxford shirt. As he shared his story with a video crew hired by Sierra Nevada to document the brew day, McAuliffe sipped on a Kellerweis, an American style Hefeweizen, often nodding in approval after each sip.
The actual brewing was a largely ceremonial affair. After a morning of interviews, McAuliffe and Grossman walked into the brew house, each took a handle of a large white plastic pail filled with Brewers Gold hops and tipped the cones into a large copper brew kettle. Sierra Nevada’s capable brewing staff handled the majority of the actual brewing. After a sampling of the wort, which McAuliffe declared “very good,” they headed into the brewpub for lunch.
Officially the beer was called Jack and Ken’s Ale, but over lunch that brew day, McAuliffe shared a story of how the black barleywine came into existence, and revealed its true name.
Per the legend, back in the late 1970s the folks of New Albion and Anchor Brewing gathered on the weekend closest to the summer solstice for what could loosely be called a ‘festival.’
“We had constant entertainment,” recalled McAuliffe, “and all the food you could eat and all the beer you could drink. We cooked a 140 pound luau pig as the main course, and a lot of people brought potluck items.”
To mark the occasion, New Albion created what McAuliffe calls “a right good snortin’ barleywine” and set up two kegs for all to enjoy.
Mix the hot California summer sun and a heavy, higher-alcohol brew and strange things are bound to happen. One brewery employee—fingers are usually pointed across the table at each other at this point in the story between McAuliffe and Barkley—had his want of barleywine and was observed on hands and knees moving down a row of young women with opened toed shoes and sucking the dainty digits. The beer became an instant hit and a summer classic, and earned the name “Old Toe Sucker.”
That brew day in 2010 was something of a turnaround for McAuliffe. Since his brewery had shuttered he had chosen to stay out of the spotlight, and wasn’t shy about his frustrations that others had succeeded where he had not. In 2009 he was involved in a serious car accident that severely injured his left arm, and as such was going through a difficult stretch in his personal life.
Boston Beer preserves history
A few weeks after the brew day, I was surprised to receive a phone call from Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer Company, makers of Samuel Adams.
Koch runs the second largest craft brewery in America and has spent a career growing his brewery, which also includes Angry Orchard Cider, Twisted Tea, and other beverages and smaller brewery brands, into a powerhouse. While occasionally but rightly criticized by other brewers for what they’ve seen as underhanded tactics (like stacking the consumer’s preference poll at early iterations of the Great American Beer Festival), Koch has also respected the brotherhood of brewing and routinely stepped up to help others in need, such as during a hop shortage a decade ago when he supplied smaller brewers with his brewery’s stock or through programs like Brewing Up the American Dream, where he works with both small brewers and entrepreneurs to help them secure micro loans to fund their businesses. The brewery also runs the Longshot homebrew competition each year where the winners see their small batch brewed commercially. Several previous winners have since gone pro.
In the call, Koch told me that in 1993 he had taken ownership of the trademark for New Albion when it was about to expire, in order to protect the integrity of the first craft beer. In addition to preserving the name of the brewery, Koch also trademarked New Albion Brewing Co. He then reached out to McAuliffe and proposed reviving New Albion for a modern age. After months of negotiations and conversations, McAuliffe arrived at the Boston brewery on July 3, 2012 to mash in the first batch of New Albion Ale in 30 years.
What they created was a pale ale “as faithfully” as McAuliffe could recall to his original. Malt variations that replaced strains used in the 1970s were substituted, for example. More than 6,000 barrels of beer were made and released with the original label art. Once it sold out, it was gone.
Afterwards Koch gave every penny of the profits from the sale of that beer to McAuliffe, giving him a proper retirement, and the payday from beer that he so richly deserves. The trademark also went back to the McAuliffe family. These days McAuliffe’s daughter is contracting New Albion ale through a small Ohio brewery.
Honoring a legend
Years ago, Sam Caligione, the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Ales in Delaware, called the craft beer industry “99 percent asshole free.” The number has likely dipped into the high 70s since then, as sales and beer popularity have soared, but the sentiment remains true. As much as there is increased competition among the thousands of breweries fighting for shelf space, tap handles, consumer dollars, and relevance, there’s still something ingrained in brewing professionals: the desire to create, to be part of a community, and to see the profession grow. Sam Adams, and Jim Koch in particular, gets grief from smaller breweries and some drinkers more and more these days for being more corporate than craft, but stories like their partnership with McAuliffe should remind folks that there are humans behind the business.
The breweries that have been largely successful have done so because of these people. Consumers like to identify a product with a person (or a spokesperson), someone they can relate to outside of the item itself. The larger craft breweries in the country have done this with folks like Koch, or Grossman, or Kim Jordan of New Belgium Brewing. The same is true all the way down the brand new local brewery in your home town. If you can walk in, meet the owners, meet the brewer, shake their hand and feel good about that connection and who your dollars are benefiting, you’ll care about the product a little more. And it goes both ways. Successful breweries are backed by people who actually care about their business and their beer, and show it each and every day with each interaction.
Building on history
Since the day New Albion opened to the public the number of breweries in this country has steadily climbed. And not until 2016 did U.S. breweries officially surpass, finally, pre-Prohibition numbers. In that same spirit, the majority of early breweries were relatively small in production volume and served a modest geographical area. The players that were big at the beginning of this renaissance are even bigger now, especially Anheseur-Bush InBev, a company based in Belgium that through mergers and acquisitions has become the largest brewing company on the planet.
It’s generally accepted that the larger brewing companies didn’t pay much attention to these upstarts through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Business was good, so why should they? The majority of beer drinkers in the county preferred (and still do, actually) to purchase light, mass-produced lagers, so these smaller breweries didn’t upset the Clydesdale-driven cart.
So much of where craft beer is today is thanks to McAuliffe, Stern, and Zimmerman.
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John Holl is the editor of All About Beer Magazine.
JohnHoll@allaboutbeer.com