It started as a dream... Or maybe a flashback. Back to the days of the hometown brewery…before Prohibition. A time and a place where citizens in towns and districts all over America rallied around beer that was theirs. Beer that was crafted for them, in accordance to their tastes. Beer that was an expression of their lives and passion. This passion, in a tiny tucked away town aptly called Hopland, drove the dream into existence in the humble but intrepid foundation of the Mendocino Brewing Company on August 14th 1983.

The Hopland Brewery was the first brewpub opened in California (2nd in the US) after the repeal of the 18th Amendment (by the 21st Amendment) in 1933. The passion, it seems, was a shared one (currently there are about 1500 craft breweries in operation in the United States). It did not take long for the Hopland Brewery to become a landmark, a point of pilgrimage on famed California Highway 101 (“take the Golden Gate Bridge out of town for 2 hours; the brewery is on the right”).

It’s been a long strange trip from Hopland in 1983. We’ve trekked from a 1983 production of about 400 barrels (5500 case equivalent) to the current production of about 75,000 barrels (over one million cases)…from distribution over the bar in Hopland to nearly nationwide distribution in countless stores, restaurants, bars and tap houses. As we roll into the second decade of a new century, we’ve come from making a handful of ales to the manufacture and distribution our Seasonal Releases, the new Imperial Series, (IPA, Stout & Barleywine) Organic Ale and Lagers (under our Butte Creek Label), our industry jarring Cast-of-Hawk “mix-packs” and an ever-growing number of contracts brewed for other entities (a growing industry trend). Currently, Mendocino Brewing is responsible for the production of well over 20 nationally recognized labels.