A slow start
Dennis Arnold was the only act in town when he founded Gentle Ben’s brewery, now at 865 E. University Blvd., in 1991. Arnold was born and raised in Tucson. His three kids all pursued degrees at the UA and worked at Gentle Ben’s as teenagers.
The first beer he made was a rich, hoppy brew.
“The learning curve was pretty sharp with the palates, because this town was pretty insistent on its Bud Lights.” Arnold says. “Boy, I couldn’t give it away. And now it’s all people want. That’s just how it works, timing is everything.”
It was timing that he says defeated his first attempts to open a brewery in, of all places, San Diego, now often called the capital of craft beer. San Diego County has 120 of the state’s 570 craft breweries, by far the most in the nation. Second place goes to Colorado with 300, and Arizona weighs in with 76.
“One of the first breweries my wife and I saw was in Berkeley, California, in the Bay area.” Arnold says. “And so we got in our cars and drove south and tried to start a brewery in San Diego, and we were told that they would never allow breweries because they stink. That was in 1986. The first brewery opened up there in 1989.
“After banging our heads against the wall in San Diego for a couple of years, we set out here and decided to get a brewery going in Tucson.”
And now, it seems Tucson’s time has come. Starting in 2011, microbreweries began to surge, jumping to 14 this year with at least four more planning to open in the next year or two. This follows a national trend in which 620 microbreweries in 2010 grew to more than 1,800 in 2014 according to the Brewers Association, a national professional organization.
