Ale in the Family
There is still a handful of hardy, multi-generation American brewing companies, descended from the beer baron founders of the 19th century. Of course there’s Yuengling in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, run by D.G. Yuengling’s great-great-grandson, Dick Yuengling, Jr., who employs all four of his daughters. Ted Marti in New Ulm, Minnesota has three sons—Jace, Kyle, and Franz—ostensibly making Schell’s a G6 brewery. F.X. Matt in Utica, New York spans four generations, as do a few others.
Another brewery rooted in the 19th century is Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. Though established in 1896, the current owner, Fritz Maytag, is unrelated to the founder. Were it not for Maytag, who bought the brewing concern in 1965, rescuing it from bankruptcy and less-than-stellar beer, it absolutely would not have survived. By concentrating on brewing classical styles of beer, Maytag laid the foundation for every craft brewing company launched in its wake. As such, it blurs the distinction between generations-old breweries and contemporary ones. Is it an independent regional brewery like Dixie or Spoetzl or the first post-Prohibition microbrewery? As for keeping it in the family, Maytag’s daughter doesn’t work there but his nephew, John Dannerbeck, is the director of sales and marketing.
But craft breweries are different. It’s like comparing garage bands to metropolitan orchestras. While every brewery makes beer, numerous challenges face smaller craft breweries compared to the corporate concerns. The former’s shoestring budgets often provide little for equipment, modernization or marketing. As for distribution, finite tap lines and shelf space diminish opportunities that are lavished on the giants. So while mom-and-pop breweries continue to make inroads, the fact remains that the roughly 1,400 of them combined account for only four out of every 100 beers consumed in this country, compared to the largest particular concern profiting from around half of all purchases.
You can’t apply the mission or mechanics of homegrown breweries from the 1980s onward to the industrial ones that have survived since the nineteenth century.
Not only are many of the microbreweries that sprang up in the last 30 years still in the game, but several are family-run companies. If having a blood connection meant nothing to beer drinkers, why have Peter Coors and August Busch IV appeared in commercials since the independent brewers began taking tiny chunks of their market share?
This segment of the beer industry values DNA as much as an MBA. Sierra Nevada emerged as a stalwart of the craft brewing renaissance and remains at the forefront as the second generation is becoming comfortable at the reins.
In Michigan, almost a hundred miles down I-94 from Dexter and 21 years before Jolly Pumpkin hit shelves, Larry Bell established Bell’s Brewing Co. in Kalamazoo in 1985. Bell graduated from brewing supply shop owner to brewery owner. His daughter, Laura, first worked in the kitchen of Bell’s brewpub, The Eccentric Café. Now that she has graduated from college, she’s back home and learning the ropes of each station at the brewery. Bell’s son, David, worked on the kegging line and always has a summer job to return to until he graduates.
West of Lake Michigan, Dan and Deb Carey head New Glarus Brewing in New Glarus, WI. Their eldest daughter, Nicole, recalls rollerblading through the warehouse as a 13-year-old. Now 27, as the company’s most recent hire she handles public relations and reports to her mom, the president. Her dad, the brewmaster, has offered to teach the biology major the science of brewing.
In Portland, ME, the D.L. Geary Brewing Co. is still run by founder Dave Geary. His daughter, Kelly Geary-Lucas, worked as a paralegal in 1993 when she received “the call” and now deals with operations and has taken on chain sales. But when her parents initially told her about the brewery idea, she asked, “‘Are you going to make a Coors Light or a Budweiser?’ I hadn’t been out west, so wasn’t sure what was going on there.”
Back on the West Coast, there’s a town in California’s Anderson Valley that still has no traffic lights called Boonville. When Ken Allen started putting together the Anderson Valley Brewing Co., his son Loren literally helped build the brewery, which opened in 1987. Upon college graduation, Loren Allen returned.
Up north, Rogue Brewing, which calls Newport, OR, home but has brewpubs throughout the state, just turned 20. Former Nike VP Jack Joyce co-founded the company and put his son, Brett, to work washing dishes. Now, after traveling the world as an Adidas executive, Brett is Rogue’s president. Though he doesn’t recommend going into the beer business to get rich, compared to the corporate world of athletic footwear, it’s highly enjoyable. “What I love is the fact that I work for a company without corporate politics,” Brett Joyce says, having shed the bureaucracy for beerocracy.
And in Fort Collins, CO, Jeff Lebesch and wife Kim Jordan started New Belgium Brewing Co. The first beers brewed and bottled in their basement hit shelves in 1991. Kim’s son, Zak Danielson, helped with the bottling then, and at age 23, is now in charge of the cellar at the brewery’s vastly expanded brewhouse.
Generally, today’s brewery founders are fortunate if they have one or two kids to work for them and learn the intricacies of a family business. Imagine Ed and Carol Stoudt’s good fortune to have five kids, all of whom work or have worked at Stoudt’s Brewing Co., which they initially established to compliment Ed’s Black Angus restaurant in Adamstown, PA in 1987.
Before then, to wash down the hand-cut meat enjoyed at the restaurant, Stoudt had to import German beer. Once Carol Stoudt raised their five kids—Elizabeth, Carry, Eddie, Jr., Laura, and Gretel—to the point where the youngest was off to kindergarten, she took it upon herself to ensure that the restaurant could offer an all locally-prepared menu. The Stoudts moved forward on an idea that had hit them during a trip to the Pacific Northwest where they toured breweries, coincidentally, with Ken Allen and David Geary.
The Stoudts are the Partridge Family of the beer world. The children worked at the brewery, restaurant or the beerfests hosted in their authentic biergarten. The youngest, Gretel, sold soft pretzels at their various fests; Laura made funnel cakes. The oldest three returned from external careers. Elizabeth is learning how to make artisan cheese and is the baker at Eddie’s Breads where, not surprisingly, beer is an ingredient in most of the recipes. Carry worked for a textile design company before becoming Stoudt’s graphic designer; and her husband is the head brewer. Eddie, Jr. worked coast-to-coast in the transportation industry, which made him realize, as Carol Stoudt puts it, that “he is not fond of cities so he asked if there was a job in the business.” He handles distribution and wholesalers, in contrast to his early days of playing trumpet with the German bands at the fests. His wife, Jodi Andrews Stoudt, had already been a professional brewer and now does Stoudt’s publicity. She’s also helping Elizabeth inaugurate the cheesery, including rinsing the cheeses in beer!
