The Phoenix Ale Brewery

About Us:

The late Greg "Fretzy" Fretz and I started to talk about opening a brewery in Phoenix as far back as 2009.  After selling Pyramid Breweries in Seattle, I was both anxious to start afresh in an industry I love dearly, and, after 25 years in the Pacific Northwest, I needed some sun in my life.  Fretzy persuaded me to come and take a look at Phoenix as a possible location for a new brewery.  I thought about it for several nanoseconds - a microbrewery in The Valley of the Sun! After many frustrating months of searching for the right building and location, and several false starts, we settled on a plain old boxy warehouse on an acre of land at  3002  E Washington St, just north of Skyharbor International Airport.

It wasn't love at first sight - Fretzy was the first to see it, and he wasn't impressed by the huge billboard looming over it and the fact that he had to move a homeless guy from the door-well to get access.  However, when we started taking a closer look, it turned out to be almost perfect for a craft brewery - high ceilings provided headspace for large fermentation tanks, there was a large yard for storage and access to the double dock-well, close proximity to freeways and even a large retail area with ample parking which would take little work to turn into The Taproom.  And the light rail ran past the front door - it didn't stop for 6 blocks, but at least a lot of people would see the brewery every day.  We took a long lease on the building on January 1, 2011 and started brewing Fretzy's Unfiltered Pale Ale just over five months later.

So it was that in June 2011, after years of selling beers from breweries in other states, Fretzy realized his long-time dream of opening a brewery in Phoenix and I returned to the job I believe I was born to do.  After contracting cancer in 2012 and apparently beating it, Fretzy unexpectedly passed away in May, 2013 at the age of 44.  We invite you to come and visit the brewery that we built together and enjoy one of the many unfiltered craft beers on tap.

Cheers!