Albany Ale Returns

Eight dry years

When Schaefer closed the old Beverwyck plant on North Ferry Street in 1972, Albany was left without a brewery for the first time since the 1640s. Solid¹ The drought lasted eight years. It ended with a state budget analyst who had never brewed a batch at home.

Bill Newman's cask ale

William S. "Bill" Newman was a Boston-raised Anglophile working as a budget analyst for New York State. He and his wife Marie drank Bass and Guinness on trips to Britain and grumbled at home that there was no proper English ale. Single source²³ So he went to learn. He apprenticed with Peter Austin at the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, the founder of Britain's small-brewery movement, rising at 4:30 to weigh hops and malt and riding along on deliveries to learn how to tap a cask. Solid⁴ Whether that was in 1979 or 1980 depends on who's telling it. Disputed

He came home with plans for Austin's 10-barrel open-fermenting system and federal brewer's license No. 41, which cost $4,000 a year. Single source The brewery started, in his words, "in a mattress factory on Broadway in 1980, where Wolff's Biergarten is now." Single source The Albany Institute places it on Learned Street, which runs about a hundred meters behind that stretch of Broadway, so both are probably the same block of the Warehouse District. Inference⁵

Dates for the start differ: incorporated in October 1979, built in 1980, first beer in late 1981 or early 1982. Disputed Whatever the date, Newman's was among the first handful of American microbreweries, and Gravina calls it arguably the first east of the Rockies. Single source¹

The beers

• Newman's Pale Ale: a British-style ale of about 5%, made with Canadian malt, English hops and Albany water, served at first near room temperature, the English way. A cold amber outsold it, and Newman relented. Single source
• Winter Ale: dark brown with a garnet glint. In 1986 the British beer writer Michael Jackson put it among his five favorite American beers. Solid
• Albany Amber: first sold on 25 November 1985, according to the trademark filing, and a deliberate nod to the city's ale heritage. Solid⁶
• Golden Light and Saratoga Dortmunder, aimed at drinkers of the big brands. Single source

There were no cans. For his first seven years Newman sold kegs to bars. Drinkers at the brewery could carry home a "Newman's Ale Cube," a 4-liter plastic camping jug with a spigot, which he calls a forerunner of the growler. Single source

Famous pupils, famous visitors

Newman ran weekend seminars for would-be brewers. He names among his trainees Jim Koch, who founded Samuel Adams, Larry Bell of Bell's, and Jim Patterson of Abita. Single source Koch's apprenticeship is confirmed independently. Solid⁷ On 4 November 1986 Michael Jackson came to Albany, led a tasting at the Century House in Latham, and wrote in his new guide that Newman's "has never had the credit it deserves," blaming its obscurity on Albany's distance from Manhattan. Solid⁴ The writer William Least Heat-Moon stirred the mash there, and his November 1987 Atlantic piece, "A Glass of Handmade," is often called the first big magazine story on microbrewing. Solid⁸

The young Schenectady Gazette photographer who took the first picture of Newman in his brewery was Garry Brown, who would found Brown's Brewing in Troy. Single source

Bankruptcy and the long goodbye

By the time the Atlantic piece ran, Newman had filed for bankruptcy; the Knickerbocker News reported it on 15 August 1987. Solid F.X. Matt in Utica brewed the beers under contract from 1987, and Catamount in Vermont from 1990, until the brand ended in 1993. Single source Newman's reasons were plain: the market wasn't ready, he was his own salesman from Boston to Philadelphia, he didn't want to run a restaurant, and Albany lacked the cachet of Boston or Burlington. Single source He went on to set up breweries across the Northeast for an equipment maker, and later worked on South End housing. He came back to brew twice for anniversaries, in 2016 and 2017. Solid

Big House: the forgotten brewpub

For years after Newman's, Albany had no brewery again, until the late 1990s brought Big House Brewing Company, a prison-themed brewpub at 90 North Pearl Street. Its logo showed a convict in stripes about to down a pint. It closed around 2005. Single source⁹ It mattered more than it seems. In 1998 a 23-year-old named Craig Gravina was doing its advertising, and that's where he met a man renovating an old waterworks down the street, who came to the Big House crew for advice. Single source¹⁰

The Pump Station

That man was Cornelius H. "Neil" Evans. His family had run a brewery in Hudson, New York, famous for Evans India Pale Ale; a nineteenth-century Cornelius H. Evans, whose name Neil shared, had run it and served twice as Hudson's mayor. Single source¹¹ The brand says "since 1786," but documented Evans-family brewing begins in the mid-1800s. Beer ended with Prohibition in 1920, though near-beer may have lasted to 1928. Disputed¹²

Neil's own route to brewing was unusual. He'd spent his 20s and 30s dealing craps at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe, then worked in Atlantic City and sold cinnamon rolls in shopping malls. In his 40s he took a brewing class, won homebrew competitions, and decided to restart the family business. Single source¹³ He wanted Hudson, but chose Albany for its students, university staff and state workers, a "dream demographic." He opened in 1999, at 55, in the city's old Quackenbush pumping station, with 20-ton cranes from 1906 and 1909 overhead that had once lifted pump engines and now set the fermenters in place. Single source

The original brewmaster, George de Piro, won gold at the Great American Beer Festival for Kick-Ass Brown in 2000 and 2002. Solid De Piro later co-founded Druthers. Under later brewers Ryan Demler and Sam Pagano, the Pump Station became the brewing partner of the people rediscovering Albany Ale. Solid¹⁴

Neil Evans agreed in May 2023 to sell the building, the business and the C.H. Evans trademark to Bert and Christian Weber of Common Roots Brewing. He died about a month later, aged 78. The Pump Station poured its last beer on 29 October 2023. Solid¹⁵ Common Roots gutted and rebuilt the interior and reopened it as the Albany Outpost on 29 February 2024, promising to "carry on the torch." Solid¹⁶ The Outpost has a brew system, but as of the latest reports its beer comes from the company's South Glens Falls brewery. Single source

The Albany Ale Project

In 2010 two beer bloggers, Alan McLeod of Kingston, Ontario, and Albany native Craig Gravina, came across an early-1800s advertisement for Albany Ale and started asking what had happened to it. Solid¹⁷ Their Albany Ale Project dug through thousands of old newspapers, ads and records, and much of what this website knows about the nineteenth century traces back to it. Their book, Upper Hudson Valley Beer (History Press), launched at the Albany Institute on 11 September 2014. Solid¹⁸

Brewing the past

Gravina also led neighborhood brew-history walking tours in 2018 and 2022, through the South End, Center Square, the Warehouse District and downtown, and inspired a 2021 brewery-site scavenger race run by Discover Albany and the public library. Solid²² No new recreation of Albany Ale has been found since the Pump Station changed hands in 2023. Single source

A law that opened the taps

In 2012 Governor Cuomo signed New York's Farm Brewery Law (S.7727), modeled on the 1976 farm-winery act. It created a cheap license for breweries using New York-grown ingredients and let them run taprooms and restaurants. Solid²³ The required share of New York hops and grain was 20%, rising to 60% in 2019. The step up to 90%, originally set for 2024, was pushed back to 2029 because the state's farms couldn't grow enough malt and hops. Solid²⁴ Newman himself contrasted his $4,000 license with a farm license costing under $100. Single source

The state went from about 95 breweries in 2012 to a peak of about 535 in 2024, at one point opening one "every eight days." By April 2026 the count had slipped to about 500. Solid²⁵²⁶

Counts come from different sources that define "brewery" slightly differently, so treat the line as a rough shape. Approximate

Albany's taps today

As of October 2026, the City of Albany has four confirmed working breweries, and two more places that may brew on site. Solid

• Druthers, 1053 Broadway: opened May 2015 in an 11,000-square-foot brewery inside a 1901 warehouse. Co-founded by the Pump Station's first brewmaster. Solid²⁷
• Fort Orange Brewing, 450 North Pearl: three garage homebrewers whose third test batch became Fort Orange IPA. Opened October 2017. Solid²⁸
• Fidens, 897 Broadway: founded in Colonie in 2019 by a PE teacher, a CPA and a friend, and nationally famous for hazy IPAs. It opened a 30-tap Albany taproom in August 2023. Solid²⁹³⁰
• Perfect World Brewing, 1276 Broadway in North Albany: a family-owned 7-barrel brewery, open Saturdays. It makes an all-wheat-malt "Alles Weizen," a distant echo of Beverwijck's wheat beer. Solid³¹
• Common Roots Albany Outpost at the Pump Station, which has a brew system but brews in South Glens Falls, and Lionheart Pub and Brewery, 448 Madison, where on-site brewing couldn't be confirmed. Single source

The Warehouse District had a short-lived addition: Real McCoy Beer Co. opened a brewpub at Slip 12 on Erie Boulevard around May 2025, then closed by year's end in a landlord dispute, possibly without ever brewing there. Disputed³²

The wider Capital Region

The surrounding region has had a rough couple of years and some bright openings. Closures include Great Flats in Schenectady (September 2024), Rare Form in Troy (April 2025), Green Wolf in Middleburgh, SingleCut North in Clifton Park (the old Shmaltz brewery) and Unified Beerworks in Malta. New arrivals include Tree House in Saratoga and Ilium in Troy (both March 2025), Broken Loop in Colonie and Back Barn in Ballston Spa. Solid³³ Filter the list below to explore.

The regional list isn't exhaustive. Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties have more.

Remembering on purpose

Albany didn't so much lose its beer as forget it. In 1899 an old engineer told the New York Times that Albany ale in the 1830s had been what lager was in his own day. By 2010 it had to be reconstructed from newspaper ads. Single source The revival has been partly a business story and partly an act of memory, carried by people like Newman, Evans, Gravina and McLeod. This website is meant to be part of that.