One way or another, founder and owner of Alpine Beer Company Pat McIlhenney has spent most of his life fighting flames.
Retiring a captain after more than 30 years of firefighting, he now focuses on the raging firestorm of public protest surrounding his beers. Nobody, it seems, can get enough. Since creating Alpine Beer Company in 1999, McIlhenney and his small team of brewers have been waging a constant battle to meet demand.
The first skirmishes in his personal war to quench the public’s thirst began long ago. “I started homebrewing in ’83, with the intent to go pro,” McIlhenney told BC. “I did my homework.”
In his downtime, McIlhenney also worked in a homebrew shop and attended brew school at University of California, Davis, allowing him to “bank” a knowledge of hops, which he then applied to his beermaking, along with rigorous trial and error testing and competition entries.
McIlhenney’s professional brewing career began at Alesmith, where he had volunteered for years when not firefighting. “Eventually I told them ‘I want to start making beer’,” he said. After his years of free labor, they were glad to let him to use their equipment. “The only impact was they had to accept a check.”
He began with McIlhenney’s Irish Red, a balanced, creamy brew made with 13 malts that he had been perfecting for decades.
