New Albion Brewing Company

The New Albion Brewing Company is known as the first American craft beer brewery. Founded in 1976 by Jack McAuliffe (born 1945) in Sonoma, California, New Albion is acknowledged as the first United States microbrewery of the modern era, as well as a heavy influence on the subsequent microbrewery and craft beer movements of the late 20th century. New Albion was resurrected in 2012 under the supervision of McAuliffe, himself, and Boston Beer Company. The current president is McAuliffe's daughter, Renee M. DeLuca.

McAuliffe began as a homebrewer, influenced by the beer he sampled while stationed by the U.S. Navy in Scotland, as well that of Fritz Maytag's Anchor Brewing Company in nearby San Francisco upon his return. After graduating college in 1971, McAuliffe worked as an optical engineer in the Silicon Valley, but spent his free time studying the necessities to build his own brewery. Upon presenting his idea to professor Michael Lewis of the University of California at Davis, who would also go on to advise Ken Grossman in the beginning stages of his Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, McAuliffe utilized the Davis library to build a plan for his brewery.

Initial plans to build the brewery in San Francisco and name it the Barbary Coast Brewing Company were thwarted by expensive real estate and a lack of investors. By 1975, McAuliffe quit his job and moved north to Sonoma, a decision influenced by cheaper expenses and a local food and wine scene which focused on quality and would eventually lead to emergence of California cuisine. In October 1976, along with business partners Suzy Stern (née Suzanne Denison), and Jane Zimmerman, McAuliffe officially began the New Albion Brewing Company, the name given to the San Francisco Bay Area by sailor-explorer Francis Drake, as well as a former San Francisco brewery of the same name. This marked the opening of the first microbrewery in America following Prohibition. The next year, the brewery brewed its first batch of ale. The facilities consisted of a shaded steel warehouse with shed housed food-grade 55 US gallons (200 L) Coca-Cola syrup drums he converted into brewhouse vessels and fermenters, a World War Two era bottle washer made from battleship decking, and a vintage 1910 bottle labeler.