St. Stan's Brewery is a former microbrewery in Modesto, the San Joaquin Valley, California.
The company was established in 1984. It was regarded as a high quality beer.
The brewery produced traditional German beer styles. St. Stan's was the first brewery in the United States to brew an Altbier style beer. The brewery was a leader in the microbrewery movement in the 1980s.
It was lead plaintiff in a 1997 class-action suit against Anheuser-Busch, which it accused of engaging in anti-competitive practices by coercing or bullying distributors to get them to stop distributing product for smaller breweries. A Justice Department investigation was ended but the class-action lawsuit was unaffected.
In 2008, Susan Little-Nell, the owner of St. Stan's, was one of a number of craft breweries lobbying against an attempt by Anheuser-Busch to get California state law changed to allow it to give out free souvenirs up to $5 value rather than just $.25. She described the tough situation of small brewers in the face of "free-for-all promotional spending of international corporations."
Closure
St. Stans, both the brewery and the brewpub, closed on an unknown date, but apparently by early 2015.