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Speakeasy Ales and Lagers

microbrewery in San Francisco, California

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ7574231 ↗
Source-derived summary

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers is a craft brewery that was founded in 1997 by Steve Bruce and Forest Gray in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco, California, USA. The company brands its beers with references to 1930s prohibition-era mobsters and organized crime. Prohibition Ale (an amber ale), the first beer the company produced, and Big Daddy IPA (an India Pale Ale), are two of the brewery's most popular beers. Speakeasy beer is primarily available in California, but has been distributed to over thirteen U.S. states and internationally. Speakeasy opened a tap room at the brewery in 2013, which is located at 1195 Evans Ave in San Francisco, CA, USA.

On March 10, 2017, Speakeasy announced that it had ceased operations for an indefinite period after struggling financially following a 2015 expansion for which they borrowed money from Union Bank. As a result, the company was placed into court ordered receivership and the brewery owner, Forest Gray, was forced out. Two months later Speakeasy Ales & Lagers was sold to Hunters Point Brewery, a holding company owned by Ces Butner, who is a former beer distributor based in Oakland, CA.

Products

Speakeasy Ales & Lagers has produced a large variety of unique beers and are organized into distinct series.

The Usual Suspects

Prohibition Ale - Gold Medal Winner at the 2013 Great American Beer Festival in the amber/red category

Big Daddy IPA

Double Daddy Imperial IPA

Payback Porter

Metropolis Lager

Scarlett Red Rye Ale

Tallulah Extra Pale Ale

Payback Coffee Porter

Blood Orange Double Daddy Imperial IPA

Session Series

Baby Daddy Session IPA

Pop Gun Pilsner

Suds Session Ale

The Limited Series

Black Hand Chocolate Milk Stout

Vendetta India Pale Ale

Untouchable Pale Ale

Betrayal Imperial Red Ale

Infamous Series

Blind Tiger Imperial IPA

Old Godfather Barleywine

Barrel-aged Old Godfather Barleywine

Scarface Imperial Stout

Barrel-aged Scarface Imperial Stout

Fixed Fight Barrel-aged Old Ale

Syndicate Series: a blend of vintage strong ales aged in bourbon barrels no less than a year

Syndicate Series No. 01

Syndicate Series No. 02

Syndicate Series No. 03

Syndicate Series No.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Speakeasy Ales and Lagers” is microbrewery in San Francisco, California. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Speakeasy, Ales and Lagers, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 2013, 1195, 2017—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1997. For this dossier, Speakeasy, Ales and Lagers is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “microbrewery in San Francisco, California” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7574231. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2013, 1195 and 2017.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

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  2. Expand the search: follow Speakeasy Ales and Lagers primary sources, Speakeasy Ales and Lagers archive and Speakeasy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Speakeasy Ales and Lagers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.