At its annual conference, held earlier this month in Kalamazoo, the Michigan Brewers Guild paid tribute to Jack Archiable, Traverse City’s first modern craft beer pioneer. At the event, which took place on January 12 at Kalamazoo’s Radisson Plaza Hotel, Archiable received the Tom Burns Award, one of three key awards that the Michigan Brewers Guild gives out every year. With the honor, Archiable joins a list of past recipients that includes other Michigan beer luminaries like Larry Bell (founder of Bell’s Brewery), Ron Jeffries (co-founder and brewmaster for Northern United Brewing Company, which includes Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales and North Peak Brewing Company), and more.

Each year, the Michigan Brewers Guild bestows the Tom Burns Award upon someone “who embodies the pioneering spirit of the Michigan brewing industry” and “whose hard work, passion, and perseverance has been a guiding force in creating the Great Beer State while being supportive of the entire craft beer industry in Michigan.” Archiable fit the criteria as the founder of Traverse Brewing Company, one of the first craft breweries in the state of Michigan (he was assigned brewery license #007) and the very first to be established in northern Michigan.

In January 2021, The Ticker took a look back at Traverse Brewing Company and at Archiable’s contributions to building the foundations of Traverse City’s craft beer scene. An Ohio transplant with substantial homebrewing experience, Archiable moved to northern Michigan in the mid-1990s and opened Traverse Brewing Company at 11550 US-31 South in Williamsburg. There, Archiable had the distinction of brewing the first commercially-brewed beer made in northern Michigan since Prohibition, the Manitou Amber Ale. He also employed and mentored numerous people who would go on to start their own influential breweries in northern Michigan, including Joe Short of Short’s Brewing Company, Russell Springsteen of Right Brain Brewery, and Jon Niedermaier of Brewery Terra Firma. Speaking to The Ticker in 2021, Springsteen called Archiable “the Godfather of northern Michigan brewing.”

Many or Archiable’s recipes are still in circulation in northern Michigan. After Traverse Brewing Company closed its doors in 2008, Niedermaier bought the equipment and intellectual property, including the recipes for Manitou Amber. Several of those beers are sold under the Terra Firma label to this day.

Learn more about Archiable’s Michigan Brewers Guild honor here.

Pictured: Jack Archiable and Michigan Brewers Guild Executive Director Scott Graham at this month's Brewers Guild conference.