The Year Every State Got Its First Craft Brewery [MAP]

Today, beer geeks flock to their local craft brewery to sit at picnic tables and sip small-batch brews — a culture that stems from the Great American Craft Beer Boom that gained traction in the 1960s and ’70s. However, the existence of craft breweries predates that sudden rise by over a century.

Pennsylvania is home to the country’s first craft brewery, D.G. Yuengling & Son, which opened in 1829. (For temporal comparison, that’s the same year William Austin Burt patented America’s first typewriter.) Yuengling is also the oldest standing brewery in the U.S. The country’s second craft brewery didn’t come until 1860 when August Schell Brewing Company opened in Minnesota.

Those were the only two craft breweries in the States before the industry went through a growth spurt in the later 1900s. The third craft brewery in the U.S., California’s Anchor Brewing Co., which opened in 1965, didn’t arrive until over 100 years after August Schell’s founding. Anchor had operated in San Francisco since 1896, but many consider the takeover by brewer Fritz Maytag, who is known as the “father of modern microbreweries,” to be the start of Anchor’s status as craft. California alone experienced a surge in openings in the 1970s and ’80s — including Ken Grossman’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in 1980 — before craft breweries appeared in most other states.

Boulder Beer, which opened in Colorado in 1979, and the now-shuttered William S. Newman Brewing Co., which opened in New York in 1981, were the fourth and fifth breweries in the country. The year that saw the most states gain their first craft brewery was 1984 when Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Massachusetts, Washington, Virginia, Tennessee, and Oregon all hosted openings.

Mississippi and North Dakota were the final two states to have a craft brewery open and the only two whose openings fell in the 21st century. Lazy Magnolia Brewery sprouted in Mississippi in 2003, and Fargo Brewing Company opened in North Dakota in 2010.

The following year, the U.S. officially hit 100 open and operating breweries. Other nationwide milestones include passing the 1,000- and 5,000-brewery benchmarks in 1996 and 2016, respectively.

Below are a map and a table listing the first craft brewery in each state. For the purposes of this map, we looked to craftbeer.com, which sifted through historical documents in the Brewers Association’s archives. Craftbeer.com defines a craft brewery as one that is independently owned with an annual production of less than 6 million barrels of beer and led by a brewer that holds a Brewer’s Notice. Some breweries listed below are no longer in operation.

The Year Every State Got Its First Craft Brewery

Year
State
Brewery

1829
Pennsylvania
D. G. Yuengling & Son

1860
Minnesota
August Schell Brewing Company

1965
California
Anchor Brewing Co.

1979
Colorado
Boulder Beer

1981
New York
William S. Newman Brewing Co.

1982
Michigan
The Real Ale Co.

1984
Arkansas
Riley-Lyon, Inc.

1984
Montana
Kessler Brewing

1984
Massachusetts
Boston Beer Co.

1984
Washington
Thomas Kemper Brewing Co. and Yakima Brewing & Malting Co.

1984
Virginia
Chesapeake Bay Brewing

1984
Tennessee
Bohannon Brewing Co.

1984
Oregon
Columbia River Brewery and McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery & Public House

1985
Iowa
Millstream Brewing Co.

1985
Texas
Reinheitsgebot Brewing Company

1986
Hawaii
Koolau Brewery, Inc.

1986
North Carolina
The Weeping Radish

1986
Maine
Geary Brewing Co.

1986
Louisiana
Abita Brewing Company

1986
Wisconsin
Sprecher Brewing Company

1986
Utah
Wasatch Brew Pub

1987
Connecticut
New Haven Brewing Company

1987
Alaska
Chinook Alaskan Brewing

1987
Kentucky
Oldenberg Brewery Company

1987
Illinois
Sieben’s River North Brewery and Tap & Growler

1987
New Mexico
Embudo Station Preston Brewery and Albuquerque Brewing & Bottling Co.

1988
Arizona
Big Stick Brewing Co., Electric Dave Brewing, and Christopher Joseph

1988
Florida
McGuire’s Irish Pub

1988
Idaho
Grand Teton Brewing

1988
Vermont
The Vermont Pub & Brewery

1988
Ohio
Great Lakes Brewing Company

1989
Georgia
Friends Brewing Co.

1989
Missouri
Boulevard Brewing Co.

1989
Kansas
Free State Brewing Company

1990
Indiana
Broad Ripple Brewpub

1990
Nebraska
Empyrean Brewing Co.

1991
Washington, D.C.
Capital City Brewing Company

1991
New Hampshire
The Portsmouth Brewery

1991
South Dakota
Firehouse Brewery

1992
Alabama
Birmingham Brewing Company

1992
Nevada
Holy Cow! Casino, Café, and Brewery

1992
Oklahoma
Bricktown Brewery

1993
Maryland
Oliver Ales

1993
Rhode Island
Union Station Brewing

1994
Wyoming
Snake River Brewing

1994
West Virginia
Cardinal Brewing Company

1994
South Carolina
Palmetto Brewing Company

1995
Delaware
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

1995
New Jersey
The Ship Inn

2003
Mississippi
Lazy Magnolia Brewery

2010
North Dakota
Fargo Brewing Company

*Image retrieved from Alex Marc Wagner – unsplash.com

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