Remembering Jack McAuliffe

Jack McAuliffe (May 11, 1945 – July 15, 2025)

I first heard of Jack McAuliffe way back in the early/mid-1980’s; his name was already legend.  Along with his partners, Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, Jack opened this country’s first “microbrewery” in Sonoma County, California.  New Albion Brewery opened in 1976 (the year I graduated high school) and closed six short years later.  But it lit the fuse to the explosion of craft breweries that were soon to follow.

I never thought I’d meet the man, mostly because he retired from the public eye.  But many years later, the Boston Beer Company brewed a batch of New Albion Ale in Jack’s honor and he went on a bit of a victory lap around the country.  In 2015, I was made aware that Jack was coming to Chicago, so, of course I had to shake the man’s hand and thank him for his vision.

The somewhat hazy photo below was captured at the Haymarket Brewery downtown.  That’s the owner-brewer, Pete Crowley to the left of Jack, who is sitting on the brew deck stairs.  To the right of Jack is Author/Speaker Randy Mosher, the Publisher of All About Beer, John Holl, and me. 

Jack, Suzy and Jane, were all inducted into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame along with nine other inaugural inductees in February of 2025.  Here is Jack’s official Hall of Fame bio:

McAuliffe was born in Venezuela due to his father’s work with the U.S. Government, but by third grade, the family had moved to Virginia. In 1964, he enlisted in the Navy and was stationed in Dunoon, Scotland, where he discovered Scottish ales. He began homebrewing at the time, which he continued after his discharge in 1968 while attending college on the G.I. Bill. He took a job in engineering in Sunnyvale, California but was already planning to open his own brewery. When San Francisco proved too expensive, he set his sights a little farther north, and relocated to Sonoma, California, where he persuaded two friends, Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, to become partners in the endeavor and they rented a property in 1976, where he built a 1-bbl brewhouse and began making beer the following year. While the New Albion Brewery was only open for six years, closing in late 1982, it was the first microbrewery built from scratch in the modern era, and became a blueprint for the craft beer revolution that followed. McAuliffe left the industry, but has been welcomed back in recent years, honored for his legacy to American Craft Beer. Jack was retired and living in Arkansas until his passing in July of 2025.