Lagunitas Brewing Company

History

The brewery was founded in 1993 by Tony Magee in Lagunitas, California, and moved a year later to nearby Petaluma, California, when they quickly outgrew their original rural West Marin location.

Since the mid-2000s, Lagunitas has been one of the fastest-growing craft breweries in the United States, increasing from 27,000 barrels in 2004 to 106,000 barrels in 2010. In March 2011, the company had 92 employees with distribution in 32 states. The brewery announced a $9.5 million expansion slated to begin early 2012 which increased its brewing capacity to 600,000 barrels.

On April 9, 2012, Lagunitas announced plans for a new Chicago-based brewery equipped with a 250 barrel brew house which will also have a 600,000 barrel capacity. In May 2012 it was announced that owner Tony Magee had signed a lease for a location in the city's Douglas Park neighborhood in North Lawndale, "that will put him in a space owned by film studio Cinespace...for at least 20 years." The Chicago brewery started producing beer on April 18, 2014, and opened an on-premises taproom a few months thereafter. A third brewery is being built in Azusa, CA to be in full production by spring of 2017. This brewery will have an ultimate productive brewing capacity of 1,900,000 barrels.

On September 8, 2015, Lagunitas announced that Heineken International would acquire a 50% stake in the company to help it expand its operations globally. As a result of the deal, Lagunitas will no longer be considered a craft brewery under the Brewers Association definition of "craft" as Heineken's stake is greater than 25%.

Marijuana associations

The brewery has long-standing associations with marijuana, which have at times caused legal problems.

Some beers have had names associated with marijuana, in one case resulting in a name being banned, using the number 420 in internal materials and external advertising, and having a weekly party with marijuana smoking. The use of 420 for marketing and the smoking at parties has stopped for legal reasons.

On Saint Patrick's Day in 2005, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control served a twenty-day suspension of operations to investigate alleged cannabis dealing by employees. Officers had staked out the brewery to observe people supposedly consuming on premises. No charges were filed; Magee admits "no one was willing to sell it to them, but everyone was willing to give it to them for free." The ordeal was eventually commemorated with a beer named Undercover Investigation Shut-down Ale.

Lagunitas dropped '420' from its labels in 2013 after a trademark claim by Sweetwater Brewing Company.