The practice of brewing beer stretches back millennia. But what we call craft beer today began when Fritz Maytag bought San Francisco’s Anchor Brewery in 1965. The decades since have brought such milestones as the founding of New Albion Brewing in Sonoma in 1976 and Sierra Nevada Brewing in Chico in 1980, followed by the opening of thousands of craft breweries across the nation.
For every beer lover who has enjoyed a craft brew sometime in the last five decades, there are people who helped get that beer into your glass. Some of them founded companies, others brewed the beer or brought it to market. The more time passes, the easier it is to forget the names of the people who made our current beer landscape possible.
It makes sense to make sure they are remembered and celebrated.Yes, we’re talking about an American Craft Beer Hall of Fame. Baseball and football have their own halls of fame, as do rock and roll musicians.
The wine industry’s Vintners Hall of Fame is housed at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa.So in late 2023, when Chicago-based beer writer Marty Nachel, author of “Beer for Dummies” and “Homebrewing for Dummies,” realized the beer world didn’t have anything similar, he decided to take it on. He created an advisory board of 50 industry insiders to work out the details for an American Craft Beer Hall of Fame, from solicitingdonations and registering as a nonprofit to crafting rules and standards for the hall and its nominations.
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