America's Oldest Homebrew Shop Saved at the 11th Hour

A month ago, I wrote an obituary for FH Steinbart, the oldest homebrew store in the US. It was somewhat speculative, based on rumors I’d been hearing. Fortunately, the rumors didn’t have the facts quite right and the truth was far more hopeful. After Covid and the death of longtime owner John Debenedetti in 2021, the family was looking to move on from the business—that was true. But Steinbart also found a buyer: James Ameeti of Perfect Pour Services has stepped in, and he has big plans to inject some new energy into the homebrew side of the business.

“They approached me a year ago and asked if I wanted to buy it,” he told me last week. He passed that time, but, “a while ago—June—they said, ‘we have a couple months and then we’re going to have to shut our doors.’” Well,” James said with emphasis, “that can’t happen.”

The company is really two businesses. Because it faces the public, the homebrew shop is the more visible component, but there’s a commercial facing side, too, which provides draft line services to commercial clients. Perfect Pour installs, services, and maintains draft lines, and Ameeti was a regular customer of the latter half. At first, he thought it might make sense to buy the business and transition it out of homebrewing. “But then I started thinking about the homebrew side,” he said. “That’s what this store is all about.” Even though he’s never homebrewed and doesn’t know a lot about it, Ameeti was very animated discussing the opportunities a store like Steinbart’s offers. The day we met he’d just signed the paperwork, and he was excited to get started.

Homebrew stores are going through a rough time at the moment. Membership in the American Homebrew Association is down over a third in the past seven years, and the Brewers Association canceled Homebrew Con this year. Homebrew stores are closing nationwide as the dwindling number of homebrewers turns to easy online sales rather than their local brick-and-mortar. Yet the hobby, despite its name, has never flourishes when it is practiced in solitude. Homebrewing thrives when it is part of a community. And that’s where Ameeti sees the potential in FH Steinbart.

Homebrew shops like Steinbart’s aren’t just places to buy stuff. They are hubs where fellow hobbyists come to learn and share. Over its decades, Steinbart’s has become the place to go if you want to learn about making cider, beer, wine, or mead. Once I finally decided to take the leap to all-grain brewing, I took a class at Steinbart’s. (The instructor was a guy named Alan Sprints, not long after he’d launched his new brewery, Hair of the Dog.) It’s also where I went for a press when I wanted to turn the the apples from the tree in my front yard into cider. It hosts clubs like the Brew Crew, but also events like book releases—I had one of those—educational seminars, and social get-togethers. Ameeti mentioned a few ideas he had to jump start this community aspect, which have the potential to restore that “clubhouse” feel. Given his enthusiasm, I would expect to see the changes come sooner rather than later.

FH Steinbart is one of those critically important pillars that helped build the Oregon beer industry and turn Portland into Beervana. Customers of the store read like a who’s who of Oregon brewing history. One of the most important was the writer and homebrewer Fred Eckhardt, whose 1969 pamphlet A Treatise on Lager Beer introduced a generation to the hobby. A wave of homebrewers in 1970s and ‘80s fed the nascent craft beer movement. The brothers Widmer and McMenamin (and countless subsequent brewers) were regulars—and for decades Steinbart fed the creativity of brewers who would go on to commercial production. Beyond that, it was where the fans gathered to help support and promote beer as Oregon beer was getting re-started.

Portland—and America—wouldn’t be the same without Steinbart’s. I’m glad we won’t have to live in that lesser world

About FH Steinbart
Franz Steinbart was a Prussian immigrant who, sometime around the turn of the century, started selling brewing equipment. That brought him to Oregon, which passed its own version of Prohibition in 1916. Steinbart founded his store two years later, about ten blocks west of its current location. Steinbart ran the store basically over the span of Prohibition, dying in 1934. Two employees, Joseph DeBenedetti and Angelo Curletto, took the shop over and the former bought it outright in 1957. DeBenedetti’s son, John, started working at Steinbart’s and helmed the business until his death in 2021, when his widow MaryKay took the reins.