First thought, best thought.

By Pete Lyons & Jason Singer

Maine’s love affair with local beer is relatively recent:
The Simpsons is older than the state’s first brewpub. It wasn’t until 1988, fifty-five years after Prohibition ended, that Gritty McDuff’s opened on Portland’s Fore Street as Maine’s second brewery and first brewpub.

“We were only the thirty-third licensed brewery in America,” says Ed Stebbins, co-founder of Gritty’s. “People told us that beer came from Milwaukee in a can. They were like, ‘Come on, boys. What are you trying to do?’”

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.