Co-founder of 16 Mile Brewery
By Julie Johnson
Published November 2013, Volume 34, Number 5
Chad Campbell and Brett McCrea of 16 Mile Brewery
Brett McCrea and Chad Campbell founded 16 Mile Brewery in 2009 in Georgetown, DE, a town in the geographic center of the state said to be 16 miles from anywhere. The brewery is sited in a 120 year-old barn on land owned by McCrea’s family.
AAB: This has been a homecoming for both of you.
BMc: That’s correct. Basically, I grew up in a house that’s 300 yards from here. I went to undergraduate in Maryland, and graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. After that, I worked for the federal government for 10 years. I moved back to help my father. Chad also grew up in Georgetown, but I didn’t really know him: we went to the same high school and the same college, although he likes to remind me that I am precisely four years older than he is!
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Founders, Tröegs Brewing Co.
By Julie Johnson
Published September 2013, Volume 34, Number 4
Chris and John Trogner of Tröegs Brewing Co.
Brothers John and Chris Trogner were born and raised in central Pennsylvania. After a stint in Boulder, CO, where John worked a brewery and Chris in a restaurant, they returned to their home state, and founded Tröegs Brewing Co. in Harrisburg in 1996. In 2011, Tröegs moved to a new brewery in Hershey, PA.
AAB: How did you decide to come back to Pennsylvania to open your own brewery?
CT: We’d been looking at Colorado as an option, but we recognized there were a lot of breweries there—Odell’s, Left Hand, New Belgium—that were growing very rapidly. Then we looked at Pennsylvania as being a little under-served. We had some older, very traditional regional breweries, but not a huge number of craft start-ups. With the exception of Stoudt’s, of course, and Victory and a few others, there weren’t that many. So we felt there was more opportunity to come home and start a brewery.
We also looked on the highway map at the proximity of large metropolitan areas. Colorado’s a beautiful state, but it can take five to eight hours to get to the next city, whereas the mid-Atlantic region, central Pennsylvania in particular, it really only takes two or three hours to get to five or six major cities on the East Coast.
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Head Brewer, Nebraska Brewing Co.
By Julie Johnson
Published July 2013, Volume 34, Number 3
Tyson Arp of Nebraska Brewing Co.
Tyson Arp has been with the brewpub since it first opened just over five years ago. Originally a carpenter, he studied brewing at the Siebel Institute. His lucky break came when he won Best in Show at his first homebrewing competition. One of the judges, Paul Kavulak, was poised to open Nebraska Brewing Co., and hired Arp as assistant brewer.
AAB: Nebraska Brewing Co. seems to have a two-pronged business model. There’s a fairly traditional brewpub with a casual American menu and beer in standard craft styles, and then you have this edgy experimental line.
TA: That’s a good way to look at it. From the production side, it is almost two separate streams of beer. That’s partly a reflection of the atmosphere here in Omaha when we started, and things we had to do to define markets, but also do the beers we wanted to do and find people who wanted to drink them.
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Green Flash Brewing Co.
By Julie Johnson
Published May 2013, Volume 34, Number 2
Chuck Silva of Green Flash Brewing Co.
All About Beer: What is it about the San Diego beer community? Ten years ago, even though a lot of the major players were in place, it wasn’t on fire the way it is now.
CS: I think the fun thing that makes San Diego unique, compared to other awesome metropolitan craft beer hot spots, is that San Diego offers more diversity of beer styles. There’s a lot more Belgian styles, innovative new styles, not just hoppy beers. We have great hoppy beers here, for sure, but we’re not so narrowly focused.
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Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen
By Julie Johnson
Published March 2013, Volume 34, Number 1
All About Beer: You have been in on start-up brewing enterprises in many countries. How receptive were they to brewpubs and craft beer? Will Kemper: The reception has generally been positive, for example, in Turkey—specifically Istanbul, because Turkey’s a big country, so you’re really talking Istanbul.
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DuClaw Brewing Company
By Julie Johnson
Published January 2013, Volume 33, Number 6
All About Beer: When was DuClaw founded? Jim Wagner: DuClaw was founded in 1996 by Dave Benfield, who is still the owner.
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