After being laid off as an attorney, a job he never much cared for, Dan Kleban and his brother, two long-time homebrewers, put together a business plan and in 2009, opened Maine Beer Company. More than just make beer, “we wanted to try to prove a point that companies, even as small as we started and as small as we still are, can be a true model for good in the world and really have a positive impact,” Kleban says. The brewery does this by focusing on its carbon footprint and giving back to the environment in meaningful ways, all while making highly rated beers.
CBB // Back when the whole world looked different for craft beer and you couldn’t have imagined necessarily that it would be what we’re seeing right now with almost 7,000 breweries in the United States, why take that kind of risk and jump right into this career of brewing?
DK // I never thought I would become a professional brewer. There were not breweries opening up in the United States at anywhere near the rate that they’ve been opening up over the past six or seven years. But in 2008 and 2009, there were some macro things going on in our economy. There was a big financial year and obviously a big financial collapse, and I was not immune to that. I got laid off as an attorney in the winter of 2009. That actually turned out to be a really good thing for me. It was certainly one of those times in my life where you know you can make the best of a bad situation, and it so happened that just before that, my brother had approached me with the idea [of opening a brewery] because he used to homebrew with me on the weekends, and he knew that I loved and had a true passion for it.