New Albion Brewing Company

Description:

New Albion Ale was one of three styles of beer brewed at New Albion Brewing Company, the nation's first post-Prohibition microbrewery built from the ground up, which opened in 1976 and closed in 1982, in Sonoma, California.

New Albion was distinctive, in part, for being one of the first breweries to use Cascade hops in its beers. Cascade hops were a cultivar developed at Oregon State University and released in 1971. Taking their name from the Cascade mountain range in the Pacific Northwest, Cascade hops give floral, citrus, spice, and pine characteristics to beers, especially pale ales and India Pale Ales (IPAs). Cascade hops defined post-Prohibition microbrewed American beers as different from anything else in the world.

New Albion Brewing Co. was co-founded by Jack McAuliffe, Suzy Denison, and Jane Zimmerman. At the time of New Albion's founding, Denison was 43, divorced, and a mother of three children. Previously, she had worked as a bilingual secretary at the United Nations in New York City and studied music and composing. Denison moved to Sonoma when her eldest child was accepted to Stanford University. Denison and her friend Jane Zimmerman met Jack McAuliffe through an acquaintance. McAuliffe described his idea to build a brewery that would use traditional ingredients and artisan techniques to brew European-style beers in small batches--plans he had formed while serving in the U.S. Navy in Scotland in the 1960s. The two women supplied funding to open the brewery that McAuliffe envisoned. Denison and Zimmerman brewed and delivered New Albion's beer, using Denison's van. Zimmerman left the brewery less than a year after it opened but Denison stayed, working alongside McAuliffe and others, until the business closed in the fall of 1982.