There are no mighty Clydesdales prancing across the TV screen pulling Charles Rixford's beer, no famous jocks touting its taste, no macho working stiffs plugging it to happy jingles. And small wonder. Rixford's Thousand Oaks brewery, established in Berkeley, Calif. three years ago, accounted for a mere $70,000 in sales last year, a drop in the barrel of America's $12-billion-a-year beer industry. Yet if the 47-year-old botanist turned brewmeister isn't striking fear into the hearts of Bud, Miller and Schlitz, his brew has made it into some of California's most elegant watering holes, among them San Francisco's Westin St. Francis hotel and the ultrahip American Bar & Grill in Santa Monica. In addition, Safeway stores and a growing number of other California retail outlets regularly stock Rixford's four naturally carbonated, bottle-fermented beers: Thousand Oaks and Cable Car lager, Golden Gate malt and Golden Bear dark malt. Not bad, considering that all 450 cases per month are delivered in a borrowed van by Rixford himself straight from the brewery—a basement room next to the family washer and dryer.
Rixford says that his gourmet suds are made in the first and only U.S. commercial home brewery, a claim to history he didn't set out to achieve. Never a beer connoisseur, he worked 10 years as an environmental planner with a worldwide construction firm, the Bechtel corporation, and spent two more with the California Public Utilities Commission. "I was ready to shift gears," he says, and since he had studied fermentation as a botanist, beer seemed a natural. His wife and three children took part in the decision. "We made it clear that everyone had to help out." After a $30,000 start-up investment and nine months of tussles with the zoning board, health department and licensing agencies, Rixford was finally allowed to set up shop.
Limited by law to producing no more than 1,000 gallons per month, Rixford employs sons Allan, 19, and Steven, 20, to mash grains in 1452-gallon tanks. Daughter Christie, 22, designed the bottle labels (which show the view of San Francisco from their living room), and wife Diana, 44, handles sales and promotion. The brews sell for a pricey $1 or more per bottle but have a deeper, richer flavor and slightly higher alcohol content than brand name beers. "Three of these on a hot day will knock you out completely," warns Rixford, adding that the operation, if not the taste, is "Prohibition-style." But that's a boast, not an apology. "This," Rixford says proudly, "is the ultimate in low-tech."
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