Everybody’s doing it
No longer is craft beer the domain of hipsters and hop-heads. Drinkers are old and young, urban and suburban, and coast to coast.
“I mean, our crowd is me,” says Jeremy Hilderbrand, co-founder and owner of Sentinel Peak Brewing Company, 4746 E. Grant Road. Hilderbrand and his wife, Jeannie, have been married for 12 years, and have two daughters, 10 and 8.
“It’s people with their kids, we have a lot of young families, but we also have a lot of people who are over 50. They feel comfortable coming in, they know it’s a family-friendly environment. I mean, my grandparents come here, and my grandpa is 90.”
Hilderbrand came to Tucson from Michigan as a youngster, and graduated from Canyon del Oro High School in 1989. He joined the Army and his beer enthusiasm began to develop while stationed in Germany in the early 1990s.
When he returned to study at the UA in 1997, Tucson was a three-brewery town. The only joints serving local suds were Gentle Ben’s Brewing Company of Tucson, Thunder Canyon at the Foothills Mall (its second location opened at 220 E. Broadway in early 2013), and Nimbus, 3840 E. 44th St. which now reports a production capacity of 22,500 barrels a year.
