Birthday in Beer: Steve Jones

In 2011, there were 1,927 breweries operating in the United States. Relatively few of those emphasized the production of cask-conditioned 'real ale.' And, of those, even fewer fermented their beers in open fermenters.

One member of that exclusive double subset is Oliver Ales at the Pratt Street Alehouse, in Baltimore, Maryland. The brewer there, for over a decade, has been Stephen 'Steve' Jones.

Jones is on the left.

Jones is a degreed British brewer, a tireless proselytizer for cask ale, a vegetarian (!), and a charming fellow. In a melieu of hard-working 'craft' brewers, he is harder working. Today is his birthday. Here is his story, in his own words.

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• Follow Jones on Twitter at @oliverale.
• More Birthdays in Beer: here. The Brookston Beer Bulletin maintains a much more inclusive beer birthday list: here.
• The statistics on breweries were compiled by the Brewers Association, an advocacy and lobbying group for U.S. breweries producing fewer than six million barrels of beer per year. The Association does NOT track cask ale production of its member breweries.
• Caveat lector: As a representative for Select Wines, Inc. —a wine and beer wholesaler in northern Virgina— I sell the beers of Oliver Ales.