Brewing Pioneers: Suzy Denison

Jack McAuliffe and Suzy Denison. Original photo taken by the Sacramento Bee in 1977. Currently archived at the Center for Sacramento History. — Jack McAuliffe and Suzy Denison. Original photo taken by the Sacramento Bee in 1977. Currently archived at the **Center for Sacramento History**.

Brewing remains one of the most male-dominated industries in the United States, and the stories of pioneering women have often been overlooked or diminished. Yet from the foundation of the very first craft brewery, women have played important, if unheralded, roles. In this occasional series, I will try to rectify matters and herald their contributions.

Although it only survived six years, New Albion Brewing earned its place in American history by ushering in the era of craft brewing—a phenomenon that now touches nearly every country on earth. It was an entirely new idea to start a brewery from scratch to produce small-batch beer when New Albion did just that in 1976. As so many people joked at the time, people didn’t start breweries, they shut them down. The man behind New Albion, famously, was Jack McAuliffe, a visionary brewer determined to uncompromising, high-quality, British-style ales, even if he had to cobble together a brewery from obsolete equipment and 55-gallon drums. The decades have only burnished his story, turning it into something of a founding myth.

Unfortunately, the story is incomplete. In fact, Jack had two partners, both women, and they were partners in ownership as well as brewing. The brewery may have been Jack’s dream, but he couldn’t have brought it to three-dimensional life without help. One of those women, Suzy Denison (then Stern), was with him throughout the entire process. She helped fund the brewery, and then over long, intense years, helped make and sell the beer. New Albion is her story as much as it is Jack’s, and it illustrates how often we overlook key figures in brewing when they happen to be women.

Currently 87 and living in Seattle, she has led a fascinating life, one marked—no surprise—by exploration. In our discussion she expressed a bit of regret she hadn’t stuck with one career throughout her life—but pioneering entrepreneurs usually don’t. They are by temperament and mindset risk-takers and adventurers. Throughout her life, Suzy explored a number of passions deeply, from language to art, rambling from New York to Chicago to Sonoma, California—and later, to India and Jet City. It’s not surprising to discover that a woman with such an adventurous spirit would stop along the way to co-found America’s first craft brewery—and indeed, it never wouldn’t have happened without someone like her.

Below is an oral history, told by Suzy, of those years in the middle of her life when she helped make history. I had originally thought to shape this into more a typical article with lots of her quotes, but the more I listened back on our interview, the less I wanted to cut. So instead, I’ve just edited our discussion, let Suzy review it for accuracy, and offer it to you here. It’s her story, and I’ll let her tell it. As a note, I’ve included a few of my questions in italics where it helps the flow of the narrative. Our conversation was warm and lovely, and I am so thankful to Suzy for taking the time to talk to me.

Moving to California, Starting a Brewery

It was 1975. My oldest son had been accepted at Stanford and I was about ready to get out of Chicago and decided that we would just pick up and we'd all move to California. After unsuccessfully looking for a job in San Francisco and a place to live in Marin County, a friend said, “Well, why don't you just take a break from looking for work and houses and go up to the wine country? It's so beautiful.” So my daughter and I went to Sonoma and we drove around the Plaza and just fell in love with the town. And I said, OK, this is it. I mean, it was a pretty crazy, immediate decision.

I went to Sonoma State to get a second degree in music and I was doing well and enjoying it and studying harmony and doing a little composing and playing the piano. Then a new friend suggested, “You really should meet this guy, Jack McAuliffe. He's interesting and he’s fun and he wants to put a brewery together. We should all go down to San Francisco to the Edinburgh Castle. It’s a great pub with fine beer and a bagpipers.”

I didn't have any connection to beer when I was a kid. I grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I had uncles who had the Pabst Brewing concession for Pennsylvania and some other surrounding states—I don't remember. I’d say that was about as much as I knew about beer and it was just the idea of a of a new enterprise and something very engaging that caught my attention.

I got really interested in the idea. Who knows, it could have been something else other than beer. And I will say that Jack was convincing—what’s the word?—he made it pretty enticing. I mean, I guess I’ve always been influenced by and interested in people who are very smart and focused. I was definitely attracted to his brain and the idea of learning something brand new, and I guess I must have had some gut feeling—we all did—about starting the first microbrewery since Prohibition. Jack, he didn't have a dime, but he had a dream. Obviously he had been a very fine home brewer, and this was his dream.

So together my good friend, Jane Zimmerman, and I both decided that this would be a really interesting thing to do. She and I both put in fifteen hundred dollars. That was our huge investment! To go from, you know, looking for a job and studying music to starting a brewery was kind of a big leap!

How did Jack react to working with two women? If dogs could talk and had money, he would have started it with dogs. Come on. It didn't make any difference to him that we were women. The fact that we each had this pittance, looking back on it—I certainly wasn't rich and neither was Jane. I had the fifteen hundred dollars. Oh, and I also had a van and that was a big attraction. He had his eyes on the van. He knew that the van would come in handy.

We actually did build the brewery from the ground up on the property on Eighth Street in Sonoma, owned by John Batto who was a big vintner from an old Sonoma Italian family. Because we were in Sonoma County, everything was wine, wine, wine. When we would travel up to Santa Rosa, for example, to get building permits, people always said, “Well, how big is your winery?” And we would say, “No, no, no, it’s not a winery. It’s a brewery.” I mean, people didn’t even understand that. It was such a novelty.

But we built it. Jack went to Petaluma to junkyards and scrounged all of the fifty-five gallon drums, the materials for a mash tun, and so on. It was a backyard operation, but I mean, he was pretty amazing; he could do anything. In fact, I think he had been building a house with a couple of friends at the time. So for him to do sheetrocking and welding and whatever, he could do all of that. That's how it got built. He even taught me a little welding and Jane and I were up on ladders sheetrocking.The brewery was tiny - three stories because it was gravity flow. We were so small, maybe 400 barrels a year? I mean, Anheuser-Busch could do that in two minutes.

Beer and Brewing

I didn't know a thing about brewing. But Jack taught both of us what to do. At a certain point, he trusted us to manage the whole brewing process. We understood about when to add the hops and what the temperature should be. We understood how to make wort. He was a good teacher. Everything we did was bottled. That was crazy, the bottling line. I don't know where Jack found the old machinery for that, but it took a lot of work. Everything at New Albion was labor intensive. It really wasn’t rocket science, but it was demanding and it was 24/7.

I remember Jane and I screwed up once when Jack was in San Francisco, probably picking up some hops at Anchor Steam, and we were terrified. I can't remember how we fixed our mistake, but we were scared that we had ruined the entire batch. That’s it; we knew how to do it and we did it. I mean, you're a brewer, right?

I don't remember now how long I did the brewing after Jane left. I think at that point Don Barkley came on and he was from UC Davis and he was great and really knew what he was doing inside out. And at that point I took over the all the administrative work. We had to fill out all the forms for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and people from ATF would come to the brewery and look at the records. I would deliver the beer. I had all sorts of other duties. I remember once I was delivering a case of beer to the Sonoma Cheese Factory on the Plaza. And they’re heavy, you know, and I had my boots on and I walked and I was no spring chicken either. I’m carrying this heavy crate—we made our own wooden cases—and there were some people sitting there having lunch. And I heard one of them say, “There goes the vice president!” It just cracked me up.

Everything was extremely local. For example, we gave our spent grains to a local pig farmer and then he in turn would give us a pig and we would roast it in the ground, Hawaiian style. We had these incredible parties up in the Sonoma Hills. Sal Guardino, who was an artist and a friend of Jack’s—he's the one who came up with the label—would have these amazing parties on his property. He would roast this pig that came from our spent grains and it was so delicious! We gave used hops to farmers as mulch. And so there was a real sort of local feeling about it.

Some wonderful friends from Chicago came to visit once and they were just horrified. They said, “God, you know, you’re working so hard. Look at you - you’re lifting all these heavy things and what’s going on now, why are you doing this?” I told them it was exciting. It was fun. It was being part of something so new.

I felt like I was a very important part of the brewery—and I did a tremendous amount. Don't forget, nobody was getting paid much. I think Jack was pleased that he thought he could rely on me. He needed that. I have newspaper clippings from September 1977 from the San Rafael Independent Journal and the Sonoma Index Trib about “New Albion ale makes its debut” and how it was on the local shelves, and so on. It was exciting. We became an important part of the community with ale, porter and stout – not wine! When I look back on the whole New Albion Brewing experience, it was a worthwhile venture.

Working with Jack

Well, I don't think it's any secret from some things that have been written about him that indicate clearly that he was just a difficult person. A friend of Jack’s—actually he was on the Board of the New Albion Brewing Company—used to say that Jack should be kept on a short chain at the brewery. I mean, he just didn't have any boundaries about things that he would say to people. Jane only lasted a year. She got fed up and she said, “I’m not doing this for his hobby anymore.” And she actually went back to school and became a licensed and very successful therapist. I wasn't smart enough to quit, so I stayed on.

Jack always wanted center stage. People have said to me, “Aren’t you angry that when Jack started getting all this attention he never even mentioned you and Jane?” and I'd say, “I’m not angry. I don't really care.” You know, it doesn't matter to me. I know the part that I played, and that’s enough for me. But he certainly wanted that limelight. And as a result he was very much interviewed and certainly deserved credit.

Yet Suzy also spoke fondly about Jack. We actually went to Scotland and England together and visited small breweries. Interesting people came to the brewery, too. One day when I was alone at the brewery, James Taylor, a big fan, came to visit. I’ll never forget that! Jack was very happy to have his brewery so he was definitely in a good mood most of the time and drinking a lot of his ale.

After New Albion

Oh, the end was terrible, so terrible. Actually, I had a hard time when [Smithsonian historian] Theresa McCulla was here; my daughter also happened to be visiting here at the time. She was present for the whole interview, and she could testify to the fact that even though my memory is very vivid and good about those days, the ending was so traumatic that I’ve pretty much blocked it from my memory. I mean, my kids remember more than I do. Things went very, very sour. We tried to expand. After, whatever it was, four or five years, when we made some effort to expand we actually had people who were interested. But Jack insisted on having 51 percent and he was just difficult to deal with. It didn't work. We could see that it was going to be a failing venture. There was no money, and there was a lawsuit at the end which I paid for.

But it was a terrible time for me, a huge loss of my time, of my efforts, of my identity. I remember that I continued to work in Sonoma. I had a series of shit jobs. And then I spent a year traveling in India because I had gotten interested in yoga. I just left with a backpack and a one-way ticket.

Yoga had become a saving grace because I did hurt my back. One of the times when I was lifting something ridiculously heavy or throwing all the malt into the kettle, Jane said, “If your back hurts, I'm going to take you to a yoga class.” I subsequently became, many years later, a yoga teacher. Even though I'm 87, I still do yoga every day. Well, kind of yoga. It’s more like stretching at this point.

I did a lot. I traveled and I spent a year in Seattle because all my kids were up here and I knew that I had had it with California at that point. I became an English-as-a-second-language teacher. I had gotten certified in San Francisco. For the first time in many years I had a real job in a private school in Seattle.

And now, at 87, I'm studying Brazilian Portuguese because I love languages. I speak French and some Italian. So I thought, OK, maybe I'll add another one.

Still Drinking Beer

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Suzy if she still enjoyed beer. Her answer serves as a perfect end to a wonderful story, bringing everything full circle.

I mean, my favorite drink right now is almost anybody's IPA. There are several that I really like. We have so many breweries now in Seattle it’s hard to choose but one I really like is Crikey IPA from Reuben’s. It’s not unlike the taste of our Pale Ale which was quite hoppy and flavorful. Obviously people who were used to Miller Lite didn't like it, but I remember the wonderful hoppy flavor and yeah, it’s pretty similar and it certainly tasted like ours.