Author: Tom Acitelli
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Acitelli on History -
Acitelli on History - Web OnlyThe First Big Magazine piece on Microbrewing, 30 Years Later
March 10, 2017 - Tom Acitelli At the start of 1987, William Least Heat-Moon was a writer best-known for a 1982 book called Blue Highways. Heat-Moon (he was part Osage) had lost his job and his wife on the same winter’s day, and so had set off on a road trip, using as a guide those blue lines on maps... View Article -
Acitelli on History - Web OnlyThe Hops Shortage of 2007-2008 and its Silver Lining
February 7, 2017 - Tom Acitelli The hops shortage that hit the brewing industry 10 years ago could not have come at a worse time for smaller American brewers—stipulating that it’s never a great time for the industry to run short on its signature bittering and aroma agent, but it also ended up having a positive side effect. The number of... View Article -
Acitelli on History - Web OnlyMichael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer Enters a Robust Middle-Age
January 20, 2017 - Tom Acitelli By the start of 1977, Michael Jackson was a mildly successful, 34-year-old newspaper and television journalist whose biggest coups to date were editing the in-flight magazine of Dutch airline KLM and filling in for another writer on a 1976 book called The English Pub (the photo-heavy affair covered exactly what its title implied). Jackson would... View Article -
Acitelli on HistoryFrom Minhas to Your House: The Nation’s Second-Oldest Brewery Turns 10
December 23, 2016 - Tom Acitelli In early October 2006, the Joseph Huber Brewing Co. in Monroe, Wis., just north of the Illinois border, traded hands for an undisclosed sum. The buyer was Huber’s biggest contract-brewing client by far: the Mountain Crest Brewing Co. of Calgary, Canada. Within three days of the purchase, Mountain Crest’s two founders and owners renamed... View Article -
Acitelli on HistoryThe Backstory on Montana’s Oldest Brewery
November 30, 2016 - Tom Acitelli Three decades ago, Reinhard and Trudy Schulte, a flush couple from Bavaria, had an idea: open a small, more traditional brewery in Montana. The idea was born of the necessity of finding decent beer not only in an America awash in watery light lagers, but in one of the nation’s most sparsely populated states. In... View Article -
Acitelli on History - Web OnlyTexas’ First Foray Into Micro-brewing, 25 years On
October 31, 2016 - Tom Acitelli Donald and Mary Thompson met in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1972. They were young Americans—Donald a Florida native and Mary a Texan—traveling abroad with their respective college roommates. The quartet hit it off. In particular, Mary and her friend liked Donald’s friend; and Donald and his friend liked Mary’s friend. That left Donald and Mary somewhat... View Article -
Acitelli on HistoryUtah Brewers: How the Beehive State Got its Buzz Back
October 20, 2016 - Tom Acitelli Greg Schirf’s mother dropped him at the side of the highway in Milwaukee so that he could hitchhike to Utah. It was 1974, and the recently minted Marquette University graduate, hair down to his waist, was unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. His older brother had gone to school out west,... View Article -
Acitelli on HistoryTo Catch a Contract Brewer: Microbrewing’s ‘Gotcha’ Moment 20 Years Ago
September 26, 2016 - Tom Acitelli On Sunday evening, Oct. 13, 1996, the sonorously calm voice of Stone Phillips, a host of NBC’s Dateline, eased into around eight million American households: “When it comes to beer, you’ve never had more choices on tap.” The words were all too true, given the decade’s growth in the number of American breweries, brewpubs and brands... View Article