Joe Stange

Scotty Hargrave will be the first to tell you that he didn’t invent the XPA. However, it seems pretty clear that he reinvented it, and he gave it definition. That happened through Balter XPA, a beer that began as Hargrave’s fine-tuned homebrew then blew up into a runaway success. It inspired many others and arguably elevated XPA to become Australia’s signature craft-beer style. Hargrave joined Balter in 2015, when the well-funded, celebrity-backed brand was still getting off the ground.

Medals might or might not sell beer, but Counter Weight is winning them and selling more beer. Based in Cheshire—roughly halfway between New Haven and Hartford, in central Connecticut—the brewery is digging into its footprint. It sells about 95 percent of its beer in state, with the rest going to Massachusetts. And by being as attentive to quality and process details as they are to the accounts that sell their beer, Counter Weight’s team is enjoying steady growth in a challenging market.

The beer often credited as the first American amber ale also came from California’s first modern brewpub. Mendocino’s Red Tail Ale debuted in 1983. Its name celebrated a hawk—and a locally popular song about that hawk—as much as it did a color. In composition, the beer was a descendant of the Mendocino founders’ own homebrews as well as the legendary New Albion Ale.