Vive la Revolution!

On this date, fifty years ago, a brewery was born and a revolution was begun.  The New Albion Brewing Company, located in Sonoma, California, was founded on October 8th, 1976.

New Albion is considered the first “microbrewery” of the modern era and it was the vision of Jack McAuliffe, a U.S. Navy man who got a taste for good beer while stationed in Scotland.  Jack was also influenced by beers made at the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco.

His initial plans for his brewery included a San Francisco location and the name, Barbary Coast Brewing Company.  But these fell by the wayside thanks to expensive real estate and lack of investors.  This led Jack to move north to Sonoma, not only for lower cost-of-living, but the nascent food and wine scene there.

Friends and eventual investors, Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, became business partners with McAuliffe and in October of 1976, New Albion Brewing Company was born.  The brewery name was inspired by explorer Sir Francis Drake’s naming of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Brewing commenced the following year.

The brewhouse, built almost entirely from scratch, managed to produce 7.5 barrels per week, every bottle of which sold rapidly.  The small brewery churned out a pale ale, a porter and a stout, all bottle-conditioned for over a month.

Despite selling every drop of beer it produced and receiving notoriety in the national media, New Albion never turned a profit, and after six years Jack, Suzy and Jane decided to close it down in November 1982.

Despite its inability to survive, the New Albion Brewing Company provided a microbrewery blueprint which, along with Anchor Brewing, inspired the craft beer, microbrewing and brewpub movements which began in the 1980s and continue to the present day.

Other early Northern California microbreweries such as Sierra Nevada and Hopland Brewing Companies were influenced by New Albion, and their founders credit McAuliffe's creation for their early successes.  Brewers throughout the country continue to cite New Albion's beer as their first craft beer experience and it has been described by one historian as "the most important failed brewery in the industry's history".

The New Albion brand was briefly resurrected in 2012 by the Boston Beer Company under the supervision of McAuliffe.  New Albion Ale was served at special events at the Great American Beer Festival and was briefly available nationwide beginning in January 2013.

Jack McAuliffe, Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman were all Inaugural Inductees to the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame in February of 2025.

Three months later, Jack McAuliffe died at age 80.