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By the end of the decade the brewing industry had consolidated to only 44 brewing companies. Industry experts predicted that soon there would only be 5 brewing companies in the United States. At the same time as the American brewing landscape was shrinking in taste and size a grassroots homebrewing culture emerged. The homebrewing hobby began to thrive because the only way a person in the United States could experience the brewing traditions and styles of other countries was to make the beer themselves.

In 1976 what some call the true renaissance of American craft brewing emerged with the founding of The New Albion Brewery in Sonoma, California by a homebrew enthusiast. While this brewery went out of business after about 6 years, there were hundreds of homebrewers that were inspired and followed in their footsteps and started breweries in the early-1980s.

The 1980s marked the decade of the microbrewing pioneers. In a time when industry experts flat out refused to recognize their existence as anything serious, the pioneering companies emerged with their passion and a vision, serving their local communities a taste of full flavored brews and old world European traditions; all with what was to become a uniquely American character. Through extraordinarily difficult market conditions, the microbreweries and brewpubs of the 1980s struggled to establish the foundation for what was to become the proliferation of craft beer in America.

Courtesy of Brewers Association