Benefield: Grace Bros. Beer makes a treasured (and temporary) return

There is a certain generation of locals who grew up — and perhaps grew out — on the taste of Grace Bros. beer.

With a brewery that anchored a corner of downtown Santa Rosa, the Grace Bros. name loomed large. And their beers — there were multiple labels and styles — were everywhere.

But the beer business ain’t easy. In 1966, after decades in the business, the brewery closed.

Unless you had a stash in your fridge, no one in Sonoma County has had a sip of Grace Bros. beer in more than five decades.

That changes Friday.

In partnership with the Grace family, Bear Republic Brewing has brewed 20-25 barrels of what they (and the Grace family) believe is as close to the original Grace Bros. Bavarian Lager as you can get.

It will be poured Friday at the Bear Republic Lakeside Brew Pub. Four-pack cans will be for sale while supplies last.

All profits will be donated to both the Ranger Road veterans charity and the Historical Society of Santa Rosa.

The event has been years in the making. Off and on, at least.

“My dad is 75, his two brothers are older, there are cousins roughly around the same age,” said Josh Grace, of Santa Rosa. “They are the oldest living Grace brothers. We wanted to get it done while they could still be involved.”

At this point, all players say this is likely a one-time deal. There are no plans to reignite the name or the recipe in any formal way.

But it’s an important step for another reason: trademark.

“The Grace Bros. name hadn’t been cataloged, it was out in the public domain,” said Rich Norgrove, CEO of Bear Republic. “I contacted the Grace family and said, would you like a brewery to work with?”

That was several years ago, and it was important because it turns out if you want to keep a name, you have to use a name.

“If you want to maintain it, you have to use it,” Norgrove said. “Part of what we needed to do was actually brew a Grace Brothers beer. You have to use it or lose it.”

The Graces said “yes.”

“(Norgrove) and his team have been incredibly generous,” Josh Grace said. “They are putting up the time and the cans.”

Norgrove said he now owns the trademark, but he’s not dead set on keeping it.

“If the Grace name was out there, it was going to be owned by the family,” he said. “I told them if you want it back, I’ll sell it to you for a dollar.”

Those early discussions set in motion a sometimes slow moving process of choosing a style of beer to brew, finding the time, making a plan.

Throw the COVID-19 pandemic in there, and it’s taken a little longer than anyone expected.

But the interest was always there.

But it wasn’t easy.

Start with this: There is no Grace brothers “recipe” per se. No beermaking road map for anyone in this generation to follow.

“Everybody asks that question,” said Mike Grace, 75. “We didn’t have a recipe.”

Mike Grace is a member of the last generation of local Graces to actually have tasted the eponymous beer.

There were mementos, there were stories, there were photos. But there was no true recipe that anyone knows of.

So the crew behind the reboot did some research.

They had decided to make this batch a Bavarian Lager. That took a bit of a history lesson.

“We knew it was a lager, we knew what the prominent lager yeasts were, what were the prominent hops based on the seasonality of what was available,” Norgrove said. “I think brewing back then was more like wine, it would change pretty frequently based on the seasonality of what was available.”

“We tried to re-create it from what the family knows as the best ‘recipe’ they had,” he said.

A couple of weeks ago they tasted an early iteration.

“It was neat,” Mike Grace said. “I thought the beer was outstanding. I think it was well received by all of us. I said to Josh, this is damn good beer.”

It’s a damn good beer with a damn long history. That’s a major piece of why this venture is likely to strike a chord with both beer lovers and history buffs.

The original Grace brothers, Frank and JT, bought an existing Sonoma County brewery in 1897.

There were fires. There was Prohibition. There were expansions and sell-offs. There were squabbles between brothers. But there was almost always beer.

As a guy in his late teens with the last name of Grace living in the shadow of a brewery that bore his name, Mike Grace often found himself a popular guy.

He recalled hanging out in the library at Santa Rosa Junior College when up walked a bunch of his buddies.

“Oh Christ, I know what they want,” he said. “We went down to the brewery, got a gallon jug to fill it up with beer.”

Then Grace states the obvious: “We didn’t go back to the library.”

But that generation of folks, the people who grabbed beers from Mike Grace’s uncle Tom at the tap room, or civic groups whose members met at the brewery during the lunch hour, is getting smaller.

The number of people who have actually had a Grace Bros. beer, and not just grown up hearing about it, are likely few.

And that was part of the allure of the partnership.

Another? Honoring the history of beer in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County.

Grace Bros. made this area famous in many circles. Norgrove wants to tip his hat to that.

“This history needs to be cataloged,” Norgrove said. “So to have the beer made with the Grace family’s blessing and guidance was even better.”

Mike Grace, for one, is looking forward to hoisting one Friday.

“I’m just happy to ride along and say thank you and get a bottle of GB,” he said. “I think that’s all it should be.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.