Albion Brewery

The building you are approaching is known as Albion Castle, but it began its life in 1870 as the Albion Ale and Porter Brewery. Its founder, a young English immigrant named John Hamlin Burnell, chose this specific plot of land for one critical reason. Hidden deep beneath the hillside lay a rare, natural aquifer that provided a steady, cold supply of spring water. In an era when clean water for brewing was hard to come by, this source gave Burnell a significant advantage. He even hand-carved two massive, two-hundred-foot-long stone cisterns into the rock to act as underground reservoirs for his operation.