Jack McAuliffe, who in 1976 drew on his experience as a Navy engineer and an avid home brewer to start the New Albion Brewing Co., the first new brewery in America since Prohibition and the inspiration for thousands of craft brewers who followed in his footsteps, died on July 15 at his home in Siloam Springs, in northwest Arkansas. He was 80.

His daughter, Renee DeLuca, said he had been in declining health for several years.

Today, with more than 9,900 breweries in the United States showcasing once-obscure styles like gueuzes, Kölsches, saisons and barley wines, it can be hard to imagine a time when there were just 50, almost all of them enormous, turning out German-style light lagers at an industrial scale.

New Albion offered something profoundly different: handmade ales using just water, barley, hops and yeast. McAuliffe and his partners, Suzy Denison and Jane Zimmerman, ran the label out of a rundown warehouse in Sonoma, California, making just 400 barrels a year, about as much as Coors could produce in a few minutes.

Production Line Made From Junkyard Parts

The very idea of small-batch beer was such an anomaly that McAuliffe struggled to find equipment and ingredients. Instead, he fashioned much of the production line himself from materials he had scavenged from a junkyard.

Unable to buy traditional hops in small quantities, he opted for a new variety, cascade, whose notes of fruit and pine didn’t appeal to the big breweries — but which, thanks to McAuliffe, became a prized part of the craft brewing repertoire.

McAuliffe’s DIY ethic likewise became a defining characteristic of craft brewing, said Theresa McCulla, a former curator at the National Museum of American History who documented the history of beer in America.

“He really showed Americans that if you can build it and sheetrock it and weld it, then you can brew your own great beer,” she said in an interview.

New Albion Inspired a Generation of Craft Brewers

McAuliffe called his brewery New Albion as an homage to a long-closed predecessor in the Bay Area, as well as to the name Sir Francis Drake gave the region when he sailed along the coast of Northern California in 1579. A drawing of Drake’s flagship, the Golden Hind, appeared on New Albion’s labels.

New Albion was profiled in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and demand for its beers grew rapidly. Still, McAuliffe was unable to secure bank loans to fund expansion, and the brewery closed in 1982.

Though New Albion lasted less than six years, practically every craft pioneer who came along afterward has cited the brewery as an inspiration, among them Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, Jim Koch of Sam Adams and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head.

“They say that when the Ramones first played in England, members of the Clash were in the audience, members of the Sex Pistols were in the audience, then away they went,” Calagione said in an interview. “While the Ramones launched a million bands, Jack McAuliffe launched 10,000 American craft breweries.”

McAuliffe’s Early Life

John Robert McAuliffe was born May 11, 1945, in Caracas, Venezuela, where his father, John James McAuliffe, was a code breaker for the U.S. government. His mother, Margaret (Quigley) McAuliffe, was a teacher.

After World War II, Jack’s father joined the State Department. The family lived in Medellín, Colombia, and later in northern Virginia while his father taught at American University in Washington.

In high school, Jack became enthralled with welding and worked in a shop as an apprentice. He enrolled at Michigan Technological University but quit to join the Navy.

He was posted to a base in Scotland, where he repaired submarine antennas. In his free time, he developed a fondness for British ales — especially full-bodied porters and stouts — and began brewing his own at home.

After he was honorably discharged from a base in the San Francisco Bay Area, McAuliffe decided to stay. He received an associate degree from the City College of San Francisco and worked for an engineering company in Sunnyvale, California, all the while dreaming of making his beloved British-style ales in the United States.

Starting New Albion

Finally, in 1975, he met Denison and Zimmerman, who each put in $1,500 in seed money to start New Albion.

McAuliffe was a demanding brewmaster, and Zimmerman left the company. But Denison stayed on, eventually running most of the daily operations.

“He totally trusted me,” she said in an interview. “He might go into San Francisco to pick up hops or something and leave me completely in charge.”

After the brewery closed, McAuliffe sold his equipment to a new brewery, the Mendocino Brewing Co., where he worked for a time as a brewmaster. He soon quit, he said, because after being a captain, he couldn’t stomach working as a deckhand.

But he continued supporting the craft brewing movement, in one instance working with Fritz Maytag, the owner of the Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco, on securing legislation to allow brew pubs to serve food.

McAuliffe later lived in Nevada and Texas before settling in Arkansas.

Along with his daughter, he is survived by his sisters, Cathy and Margarita McAuliffe; his brother, Tom; two grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Craft beer did not take off as a national phenomenon until the late 1990s, and many in the new generation of drinkers had never heard of New Albion.

That began to change in 2012. Koch, of Sam Adams, contacted McAuliffe to tell him that not only had he bought the trademark to New Albion, but he also wanted to resurrect the beer as a limited release.

After leading a nationwide tour reintroducing New Albion to craft-beer fans, Koch gave the proceeds from the beer and the rights to the New Albion name to McAuliffe.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Clay Risen

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