How did the hall of fame originate?
I expect that when people first hear about the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame, one of their initial thoughts is “Why did it take so long?” I asked myself that same question.
Late in 2023, it occurred to me that I had never heard anything about a Hall of Fame for members of the craft beer industry in the U.S., so I did multiple Google searches using a variety of different search word combinations. I was astounded that the searches kept coming up empty (well, okay, a few magazines or blogs wrote about a grouping of upper-echelon beers and casually referred to them as the “hall of fame” of brews. But they were referring to the consumable itself, not people). “Something needs to be done about this,” I mused.
I’m not sure to whom I should attribute this quote- “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself,” but after a couple weeks of mulling it over, it resonated with me (even though the “myself” part was daunting). I knew a project like this was going to require a multitude of people with different skills and experience and perspectives. One of the first things I did was to create a list of all the people I knew in the craft beer industry who might be willing to share their knowledge and experience with a project like this. The people on this list became who we now refer to as the Advisory Board (you can see the list on the Board of Directors tab under About Us).
Most of these people were quick to respond with very positive and supportive feedback on the idea of an HOF for beer people -which served as my early inspiration. As a collective, they helped steer the project through the first several months, making valuable suggestions about how The Hall would be run. Eventually, four of these Advisors would step up to join me on the Board of Directors. From this point forward, all the important decisions were made by the Directors.
Since we were not operating a physical location, the most important aspect of The Hall would be our website. This was the face of The Hall and our main means of interfacing with the world. Preceding the building of the website was the creation of our cool logo (both were designed by the same talented person).
For a few months there was constant contact between the Directors and with our web designer; the texts, FB messages, emails and Zoom calls were innumerable. This is what it took to get it right, and we feel we did -mostly. Even after the PR blitz announcing our launch, we still had a little mopping up to do. Truthfully, the website will always be a work in progress -especially when each Fall rolls around and it’s time to announce a new class of inductees into The Hall.
But it’s going to be fun and exciting all the way, and I encourage you to come along for the ride.