Albany Ale
For two hundred years, a small river city made some of the most famous beer in the Atlantic world. Then it forgot. This is the whole story, from beaver pelts to brewpubs, with every claim sourced and every guess labeled.
Workshop log
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Four centuries at a glance
Full timeline →Each band is an era. The line shows how many breweries Albany had; the bars show how much beer the whole city made, where a solid figure exists. Hover or tap for details.
The story, in six eras
Read it from the top →Wheat, Pelts & Wampum
Fort Orange's brewers, tax fights with Stuyvesant, beer priced in beaver, and the Gansevoorts' century-long brewery.
The Albany Ale Empire
A canal meets a river. Scots brewers, John Taylor's 365-vat colossus, ale shipped to New Orleans and Honolulu, and the dead-cats libel trial.
Lager on the Beaver Kill
German brewers, Hudson ice, Buttermilk Falls, and an Irish mayor's model lager brewery.
Dry Years
Near-beer, soda and survival. Legs Diamond's last night on Dove Street.
"Hedrick's or the Door"
The O'Connell machine's brewery, Beverwyck's war cans, and the year Albany had no brewery at all.
Albany Ale Returns
Newman's microbrewery, the Pump Station, the Albany Ale Project and a city full of taprooms again.
Explore
The Brewery Map
Every brewery site, then and now, over historic maps of the city. Slide through the centuries.
Timeline
Hundreds of dated events. Zoom from four centuries down to a single year.
By the Numbers
Barrels, breweries and people, with honest gaps where the records run out.
Breweries
Profiles of every known Albany brewery, from 1643 to now.
People
Brewers, tapsters, mayors, bootleggers, crusaders and rediscoverers.
How It Was Made
Wheat beer, XX ale and lager, side by side. Casks, bungs, ice and the old units of measure.
The Bung Factory
S. Kampf & Sons made the stoppers that sealed Albany's barrels, at 186 Jefferson Street.
Confidence Ledger
Every disputed, single-source or speculative claim on the site, in one place.
How to read this site
Every fact carries a small tag: Solid Single source Disputed Inference Oral history Approximate. Hover or tap a tag to see what it means. Numbered superscripts link to the sources listed at the bottom of each page. Where something is a guess, the site says so.