Tom Acitelli over at All About Beer has a nice, short read about Oregon’s beer culture origins.  It wasn’t always so potent.

It was not a hit with consumers, nor were subsequent batches. “The beer wasn’t great and the bottling was downright poor,” according to one account. Cartwright folded in 1981. Whatever its failures as a manufacturer, the brewery as an idea proved a profound success.

Give the whole thing a read.  In 2014 it’s easy for almost every place in America to take craft for granted.  It’s hard to believe that even just years ago craft beer didn’t even exist in Oregon!