Bill Newman: Godfather of American Craft Brewing

I met Bill Newman on December 5, 2016. Eighty-three years ago on that very date, Prohibition was repealed. A fortuitous day indeed to meet a pioneer of the American craft brewing world.

Founded in 1980, Wm. S. Newman Brewing Company was America’s oldest microbrewery east of the Rockies, and one of the first three microbreweries in the country. It also was New York State’s smallest brewery.

Newman produced traditional English cask-conditioned ales, considered revolutionary at a time when most Americans were swilling Miller and Bud. Newman was ahead of the curve, brewing full flavored, rich ales, the antithesis of insipid, mass market beer.

As Newman told the Times-Union in 1983, “Either I’m a fool or I’m a hero, but I’m confident I’ll be brewing beer till I’m 80. I believe small brewers are entering a renaissance period in America.” 

So how did you get into brewing?

I was never a home brewer. My wife at the time and I were big Anglophiles, and we took a number of trips to the British Isles where we would drink Bass and Guinness. Back home, we would kvetch with friends about the dearth of quality English ale and say, “Somebody should go to England and learn how to brew proper ale.” Well, that someone turned out to be me.

I apprenticed with an Englishman who had a brewery on the River Avon, south of London. I brought my wife and our six-month-old daughter, Louisa, and we went for four months in 1980. I would wake up at 4:30 am, weigh out the hops and malt, get the brew kettle going, go out for breakfast, then come back and rack the kegs. That was the brewer’s day. I also went on deliveries so I could learn the tapping system. After a few months, he said I was ready and gave me a letter of introduction to all the small brewers in Great Britain. For our last month, Marie and I rented a little car and drove all over England visiting those places.

And when you landed back in Albany?

My brewery started in a mattress factory on Broadway in 1980, where Wolff’s Biergarten is now. Garry Brown {of Brown’s Brewing} actually took the very first picture of me in my brewery back when he was a cub photographer for the Schenectady Gazette.

For the first seven years, I did wholesale production, kegs for bars and pubs. People could come to the brewery and get a Newman’s Ale Cube, a four-liter plastic camping water container with a handle and a spigot, precursor to the beer ball or growler. In 1987, I connected with F. X. Matt’s in Utica. and they contract brewed and bottled my beers until 1990 when I shifted to Catamount Brewery in White Riv- er Junction, Vermont.

Tell me more, O godfather of craft brewing!

My first beer was Newman’s Pale Ale, a British-style ale with 5 percent alcohol. No additives, just barley malt from Canada, yeast and hops from England, and good old Albany water. Then I developed a dark brown Winter Ale, brewed with some specialty malts so when you held it up to the light, it had a garnet glint. Next came Albany Amber, a malty beer. When I brewed it at Matt’s, it became a Vienna- style lager. Last was Newman’s Golden Light, my attempt to appeal to crossover drinkers, people who were accustomed to Coors, Miller and Bud. My sixth was Saratoga Dortmunder, a German-style beer.

What beer today most closely resembles Newman’s ale?

Bell’s Amber Ale, out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. And that’s because Larry Bell trained under me. I used to offer weekend seminars for aspiring brewers. Jim Koch, who went on to found Sam Adams, was one of my star pupils, and Jim Patterson of Abita Brewery in New Orleans is another. 

What led you to close the brewery in 1993?

The market was so undeveloped for what I was doing, and it was hard to make money. I could have become a brew pub but I didn’t want to go into restaurant business.

I also was my own salesman and distributor, traveling to Boston, Washington, Hartford, Philadelphia, Burlington. I did beer dinners all over the map to promote my beer. The problem was that Albany didn’t have a cachet at the time; it lacked the allure of Boston or Burlington. People didn’t understand Albany’s tremendous brewing history.

So I landed a good job as a rep for a brewing systems manufacturer, setting up breweries throughout the Northeast, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, New York City and the Adirondacks. I came with proven recipes and expertise. The momentum was just beginning to build and it was exciting to help them get up and running. And when I closed, my equipment went to a number of breweries in Vermont and helped a lot of brewers launch their businesses.