Well, I made beer in the garage. And we got pretty good at it. We started a fad.
Brewpubs are everywhere now.
In 1983 California was the first state in the nation to change its laws to allow the operation of brewpubs. Laybourn seized this opportunity, opening the Hopland Brewery, restaurant and gift shop in Hopland, about 100 miles north of San Francisco. MBC thus became the first new brewpub in California and the second in the United States since Prohibition. During the next ten years MBC grew from a small outfit run by entrepreneurs with an ancestor s beer recipe into a regional microbrewery. Industry observers considered management skills, quality control and adequate capital to be essential to survival in the microbrewing business.