Welcome to Brews Traveler 


This blog is dedicated to all those hardworking craft brewers, artisan distillers, and winemakers that I've had the privilege to know, and yet to discover.

There is a great story about the people and the personalities behind every start-up...and the stories are even better when the backdrop is about beer, wine, whiskeys, or otherwise potent potables .  

My friends and I will be posting these stories on this blog...We hope you enjoy the personal accounts of our journeys, and the beverages, as much we do.

This first post is about where it all started for me: the Harpoon Brewery in Boston, MA.  Rich Doyle, Dan Kenary, and George Ligeti took a  chance on a newly minted UC Davis grad (me) to move to Boston from the West Coast, and help start what turned out to be a pioneering craft brewery success story.  

The opportunity to work there turned out to be an inflection point in my career as well as in my personal life.  I have been fortunate to be able to make a living by being associated with the production of ethanol through most of my career (for consumption as well as for transportation fuel), but more importantly, Harpoon is how I met my wife Mary...24 years (this week), 4 kids, 1 dog, 3 cats later, and happily settled in Hingham, MA.

But it would never have happened had it not been for those 3 friends who decided that making beer "Brewed in Boston" was a preferable career over more traditional paths.  

I was only there from 1986 to 1992.  Those first six years were really, really hard.  There weren't many of us working there, the hours were long, and there were times when we all wondered if we were going to survive as a business.  It did get better.  Truth be told, the beer got better (IPA!), and they started making money after I left.

I'd do it again without hesitation.

The Harpoon team today employs a very talented team of people who built the company into what it is today, a success story.

Cheers!