Captain Fatty’s Craft Brewery embarked on its maiden voyage into the beer world when friends Jon “Captain” Wadell and Bryan “Fatty” Anderson began home-brewing beer almost a decade ago. They introduced their friend Preston Angell to the art, and upon trying his brews, they knew they were onto something.
“This is good beer; you should do this for a living,” manager Matt Minkus recalls the pair saying to Angell, who became head brewer when they went commercial. “Sure enough, here we are eight years later!”
The brewery officially opened for business in Goleta in October 2014 with Angell overseeing a one-barrel system. But in December 2015, they closed to remodel and expand their capacity. So in April of this year, Captain Fatty’s reopened with a nicer tap room, featuring clean wooden tables and a bar top handmade by Minkus, a cold storage room, and a 15-barrel system with 120 barrels of fermentation capacity. They also took the opportunity to rebrand their logo with four stripes, which represent both the four main ingredients in beer (yeast, malt, hops, and water) and the fourth stripe that all captains receive. “It all kind of works together,” said Minkus, who is now serving beer five days a week rather than the sporadic weekend days of the first incarnation.