Meet The Beer Father: Tom Buchanan

Story and photos by Kevin Howell

When home brewing gave rise to the craft beer industry in the 1990s and early 2000s, Tom Buchanan, Brewer Emeritus at Ludington Bay Brewing in Ludington, was at the forefront of the movement.

Since then, he has been an avid promoter of craft beer and a mentor to craft brewers in Michigan.

My wife Jean and I first met Tom around 2018. 

Before moving to Michigan in 2019, we searched for a craft brewery that could fill our two five-gallon corny kegs.

On one visit to Ludington, prior to our move from Indiana, we stopped at Ludington Bay Brewing, which had opened a year or so before. There we found our source for good-quality brew, thanks to Buchanan.

An all-around nice guy with a fondness for good craft beer, he came out front to talk to us as we ate lunch and drank a beer. And he set up regular refills for us with the lead brewer, Corey Wentworth, whenever we visited Michigan. 

I’d run into Tom occasionally at the brewery and we would chat over a brew. But as I was writing a story about another area brewery, Starving Artist, (read “Masterpiece in a pint,” Freshwater Reporter, Jan. 2020), I learned he was more than “just” a brewer emeritus.

Starving Artist owner and brewer Andy Thomas knew Tom when both worked at Jamesport Brewing Company in Ludington. 

“I fell in love with craft beers through Tom Buchanan,” Thomas said. “Tom’s a great guy; we call him The Beer Father (a play on The Godfather) and he’s gotten a lot of us into craft beer.”

I went to Tom and his wife Pat’s home in Mason County not long ago – socially distancing, of course – and they filled me in on how they got into the craft beer industry.

Buchanan, originally from Grand Rapids and an avid home brewer from 1991 until 1999, accidentally (literally) joined the professional league of brewers around the time Jamesport Brewing Co. got started. 

“I was (home) brewing some pretty good beers, just having fun with four or five guys, and they wanted to open a brewery,” Tom said. “We had a pretty good following.”

That was in the early to mid-’90s when they still lived in Grand Rapids, and Pat may not have been quite as enthused as Tom back then.

“It was kind of annoying, to tell you the truth,” Pat laughingly admitted. “They would come to the house and bring their brews and try to get me to drink them. I was a Bud Light drinker and I was perfectly happy drinking Bud Light. They would be, ‘Here, taste this, taste that.’

“One time one of them actually gave me something I thought was pretty good, and you would have thought I’d given him the Nobel Prize or something.”

The idea of opening a brewery fell through at that time. Then, a serious auto accident laid Tom up, ending his career as a truck driver.

That accident also opened the door to his next career in the craft beer industry.

“I’m recuperating from surgeries and coming up here where I owned some land,” Tom told me. “I went into Ludington wearing a Founder’s (Brewing) shirt and I was at the gas station. A guy got real excited, saw my shirt and said, ‘Hey, we’re building a brewery here in Ludington.’”

Tom went to see where they were building the brewery, called Jamesport Brewing Company.

“I walked in, checked it out and decided I wanted to work there,” he said.

He became Jamesport’s assistant brewer, working for free, and a few months later went to work part-time as a regular, with a wage. When the head brewer moved West, Tom took over as lead brewer/production manager, a position he held for the next 16 years.

During that time, he also set up tasting dinners and worked with others talking to state congressional representatives in an effort top expand interest in the craft industry. That was a time, in the early to mid-2000s, when craft brewing was still growing and brewers were a tight-knit group.

“In early days it was (about) introducing people to craft beers,” he explained. “People were just drinking conventional lagers. I was constantly selling craft beer, doing brewer’s dinners.

“Yeah, I got in in the early days in the craft beer industry, fortunately,” he continued. “Founder’s was around. Me and Larry Bell (of Bell’s Brewery), we had a few nights together,” Tom said, reminiscing, with a big smile on his face.

Pat was involved in the craft beer movement too, via Tom, and remembers those days well.

“Back then there weren’t that many breweries,” she said. “Those were crazy days, though. That was when all the brewers were like brewer-owners, really. Those guys would be at all the beer festivals, and they would all be their own salesmen.” 

Tom was elected vice president of the Michigan Brewers Guild in 2002, when there were 46 breweries in the state. Now there are more than 300.

Brewing wasn’t the only endeavor for Tom and Pat. Around 2002 they also started a business, cleaning and servicing beer tap systems around the area.

Tom had been doing his own tap care when a couple of beer distributors asked who was servicing his taps.

“I said, ‘Well, I am,’ and they said, ‘You ought to start a business, because no one else around here is doing that.’”

He took a course on draft beer dispensing in Illinois and founded B&R Services, named for Buchanan and Robinson, Pat’s brother-in-law.

He also hired and trained an employee, Mike Iseringhausen, who later took over the business. (See the accompanying story, “A Tap Takeover.”)

At Jamesport Brewing, Tom became friends with Ted Gedra and, gradually, the move from Jamesport to Ludington Bay Brewing began.

“He wanted to open a brewery,” Tom said, “and he really enjoyed my German beers – my Alts, my Kolsch – and asked me to come with him.”

At first, the idea was to set up a production brewery for Jamesport down the street and serve appetizers in the taproom made in the original brewery’s restaurant.

“After about a year of negotiations with the other (Jamesport) owners, that deal fell through, so we decided to just do it ourselves and we became Ludington Bay Brewing Company,” he said.

Tom was to be head brewer there, but a stroke in 2016 waylaid that plan. After a long period of recovery, he went back to Ludington Bay, but as Brewer Emeritus, and handled some of the sales of beer and essentially served as a sort of liaison between the brewery, its customers, and other pubs and beer outlets.

Tom said he “sort of” retired in February 2020 and took some time to travel to Alaska and Florida and hoped to get to Scotland and Ireland, but the pandemic cancelled those plans.

He spends time at Ludington Bay every other week or so and helps out where he can – and he’s still on the payroll.

Tom said he retired in February, but not officially. 

“I kinda missed my retirement party, so I’m not retired yet,” Tom said, with a chuckle.

His party on hold, thanks to the pandemic, the 30-year veteran of the brewing industry and his wife hang out at their 10-acre wooded property south of Manistee. There, Tom and Pat enjoy tasting different beers at home.

Kevin Howell is a transplanted freelance writer from Indiana residing in Mason County. He loves the Michigan woods, lakes and especially Michigan craft beers – not necessarily in that order! Kevin can be contacted at kevin@ytci.com.