Oops, I missed the anniversary on this by a bit. It was thirty years ago on June 12 that New York Times wine writer Frank Prial penned a full-length and very complimentary feature on Jack McAuliffe and his New Albion brewery. You have to pay to download a pdf version of the article, but it’s a great read through the lens of history.
This was so long ago that there was no reason for Prial to call New Albion a microbrewery, a craft brewery or a boutique brewery. Simply a brewery that made “what may be one of the country’s best beers.”
And . . . “At 95 cents to $1.05 per bottle, including deposit, it may well be the most expensive domestic beer sold.”
So let’s call it a buck for a 10-ounce bottle. Taking inflation into account that works out to 31 cents per ounce in 2009 dollars and cents. Or $3.72 for a 12-ounce bottle, $22.32 for a six-pack of those, and $7.84 for a 750ml bottle. Just so you know.
Worth nothing that the Washington Post got there first: Reporter Bill Ristow and photographer Michael Miller (who took that amazing photo of Jack that people keep using w/out attribution…) visited in the summer of 1978. The WaPo published Ristow’s piece on July 9 of that year.