Big Beach Brewing Marks 10 Years as Gulf Shores Gathering Spot Under New Owners

GULF SHORES, Ala. — Big Beach Brewing is marking 10 years in Gulf Shores, and the brewery’s owners and staff say the milestone is as much about the community that gathers there as it is about the beer.

Gulf Shores promotes itself with the motto “small town, big beach,” and few local businesses have embraced that identity as fully as the brewery that borrowed part of the phrase for its name. Over the past decade, Big Beach Brewing has become a regular stop for residents grabbing a drink after work, friends meeting up, fans of local live music and crowds gathered to watch college football on Saturday afternoons, including Auburn’s stunning upset of No. 1 Georgia.

This past week, the brewery celebrated its 10th anniversary with a lineup of special beer releases, live music and commemorative merchandise honoring a decade as one of the island’s favorite gathering spots.

From a 10-barrel start to a new chapter

Big Beach Brewing opened in October 2016 under owners Jim and Julie Shamburger. The brewery launched with 12 beers on tap, produced on a 10-barrel brewing system with six fermenters. In brewing terms, a barrel equals 31 gallons, so each full batch on a 10-barrel system yields about 310 gallons of beer, a scale typical of many neighborhood craft breweries and taprooms.

As their lives changed and their children moved away, the Shamburgers decided it was time to step back. In April 2025, they sold Big Beach Brewing to Kevin and Domini Corcoran and the Corcorans’ longtime friends, Doug and Tammy Warren.

Kevin Corcoran was already a familiar face at the brewery. A longtime customer, he has also served as president of the Gulf Shores City Schools Board of Education and as the public address announcer for Gulf Shores High School football games. When he and his partners heard the brewery might be for sale, he said, they moved quickly.

“We love what Big Beach represents to the community and we wanted to be a part (of it),” Corcoran said. “We wanted to continue the Shamburger’s tradition, and we wanted to improve on it, and we think we’ve met all those goals.”

Following a legend, with a new spin

As the only brewery on the island, Big Beach carries a certain weight in the community, and Doug Warren said the new owners felt that responsibility from the start. He compared it to taking over a storied football program.

“It’s like being the next coach in line behind Pat Dye or Nick Saban,” Warren said. “You want to honor the legacy, you want to do what’s always been done and at the same time, you know that times change and people change, and you’ve got to put your own spin on things and be your own entity, so we did.”

The comparison would resonate with many Alabama football fans. Dye led Auburn through one of its most successful eras in the 1980s, while Saban built a dynasty at Alabama, and both left behind high expectations for whoever came next.

The new ownership group has kept the Shamburgers’ vision in place while making several changes. Among the most visible:

• The brewery doubled its tap capacity from 12 to 24 taps, allowing a wider variety of beers to be poured at once.
• A new food menu was introduced, centered on shareable, finger-style items such as flatbreads and dips.

A head brewer who traded the newsroom for the brewhouse

Staff members at Big Beach describe themselves as more of a family than a group of co-workers, and many of them took unusual paths to the brewery.

Head Brewer Chris Gadd spent years as a newspaper journalist and also operated a small brewery in Tennessee. He and his wife had visited Gulf Shores and had been thinking about moving to the area when, three years ago, he sent an unsolicited email to Big Beach asking whether it had any openings.

“They reached back out to me in (a few days) and then just, boom, boom, boom,” Gadd said. “Next thing you know, we moved here and I was a brewer here, and then a year-and-a-half, two years later, I’m the head brewer. Basically, I love beer. I love brewing beer and that was kind of what spurred that whole transition from newspaper to brewing simultaneously.”

Gadd said the brewery’s recipes come from a mix of inspiration and customer input. A dry-erase board in the back of the brewery serves as a running list of suggestions.

“Some of it’s creativity, some of it’s listening to what people have to say,” Gadd said. “Lots and lots of people have great opinion on what they would like to see all the time, so we have a dry erase board back there writing down these ideas all the time. I’m jotting the ideas down.”

Throwback beers mark the anniversary

For the anniversary celebration, Big Beach filled every one of its taps and brought back several beers from its first year of operation in 2016. The throwback lineup included:

• Batch No. 1: A pale ale that was the very first beer brewed at Big Beach, created by former head brewer Rod Murray.
• Mister Tally Man Hefeweizen: A take on the German wheat beer style, which is typically cloudy and known for fruity and spicy notes that come from its yeast.
• Small Town Brown American Brown Ale: A malt-forward style with flavors that often lean toward caramel, toffee and toasted bread.

Reviving original recipes is a common way for craft breweries to celebrate milestones, giving longtime customers a taste of the early days and introducing newer visitors to the beers that started it all.

A manager who found her place at the beach

General Manager Amber Dion grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and built a career in food and beverage management at casinos and other businesses in that area. The long hours that come with operations that stay open around the clock, she said, “took a toll.”

“One day, I just kind of had a light bulb moment like ‘Hey, if you’re going to work in food and beverage, you can do that at the beach,’ so I decided to move to Gulf Shores,” Dion said. “I was a longtime guest of Big Beach, I live in the neighborhood, and when the former manager decided he was going to leave, he approached me about taking over, filling those shoes.”

Dion said she takes pride in maintaining the atmosphere that has defined the brewery from the start. She credited Ryan Shamburger with doing “a great job creating a welcoming, friendly environment.”

“I’m extremely proud to carry on that reality of running a bar that is so welcoming, that is able to be family friendly and pet friendly and welcome everybody,” Dion said.

A ‘third place’ for locals and visitors

Gadd described Big Beach as a “third place,” a term popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe the informal gathering spots, such as cafes, pubs and community centers, where people spend time outside of home and work.

“It’s very much a community gathering place, like the third place that some people say in addition to home and work where they can come and hang out,” Gadd said. “We have people that come in here almost every single day and we also bring in tourists, visitors from all over the country, so we’re a little bit of both, but I think it’s awesome what has been able to be achieved in the last decade kind of becoming, (besides) Fairhope, the brewery spot on the Gulf Coast.”

That balance between regulars and tourists reflects Gulf Shores itself. The city has a year-round population of residents who live and work there, along with a steady flow of vacationers drawn to the beaches of Pleasure Island, which Gulf Shores shares with neighboring Orange Beach.

Looking ahead to the next decade

While the anniversary invited reflection, Dion said the team is also focused on what lies ahead. She pointed to a pedestrian bridge under construction a short distance from the brewery and to ongoing growth at Waterway Village, the Gulf Shores development that the city has been building up as a walkable town center along the Intracoastal Waterway.

Those projects could bring more foot traffic to the area around the brewery, connecting it more closely to the restaurants, shops and public spaces taking shape nearby.

For now, the owners and staff say they intend to keep doing what has worked for a decade: pouring local beer, hosting live music and game-day crowds, and offering a welcoming place where neighbors and visitors alike can feel at home. For a business that started with 12 taps and a small brewing system in 2016, reaching the 10-year mark with a new generation of owners and a loyal following is a milestone worth raising a glass to.