Fairhope is about to get its first production brewery. Fairhope Brewing Company, taking shape at 914 Nichols Ave., is aiming for a mid-December opening, capping a startup sprint that began with a single email in January.
From newsroom to brewhouse
Head brewer Dan Murphy’s path to the kettle ran through journalism. He started writing about beer in 2009 for the blog of the Mobile/Baldwin County chapter of Free The Hops, the advocacy group behind Alabama’s craft-beer law reforms, then spent two and a half years covering the Gulf Coast beer scene for the Press-Register’s BW entertainment section — visiting breweries, beer dinners and festivals across the South.
The career change arrived by inbox: an email from Mobile native Brian Kane seeking a local brewer for a planned Gulf Coast brewery. Murphy sent samples of his homebrew; Kane and his partners liked what they tasted and, just as important, the passion behind it.
Training and build-out
Murphy spent part of the past year honing his professional chops at two established Huntsville operations, Yellowhammer Brewing and Straight to Ale, before returning south to oversee the Fairhope build-out. The new sign out front was fabricated by Loxley’s Anytime Welding — one of several local firms involved in getting the Baldwin County brewery off the ground.
The opening positions Fairhope as the eastern shore’s destination for locally made beer, joining a wave of new Alabama breweries launching across the state. Updates on the countdown to the first pour are being posted through the brewery’s social media channels.