Vallejo’s Mare Island Brewing Co. celebrates its ten-year anniversary with a podcast

VALLEJO — Did you know that the first communication about the attack in Pearl Harbor arrived in Mare Island? Or that the fight for civil rights in the shipyard in the 60’s led to significant labor changes in Mare Island and beyond? Or that Admiral David Farragut, who oversaw the construction of the Mare Island Shipyard and was its first commandant, started his military career at 9 years old? 

You will learn all this and much more through the Battleships to Beer podcast, a ten episode-podcast launched by Mare Island Brewing Co., founders Kent Fortner and Ryan Gibbons to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, where they explain the history of their company and the intimate relation it has forged with Mare Island’s rich naval past.

Hosted by Justin Crossley, founder of The Brewing Network, each episode starts with Fortner and Gibbons opening one of the beers they brew, each bearing a historical name, and explaining how it ties with the history of Mare Island. In entertaining, fast-paced dialogue, the two founders share fascinating stories of the ships, the people, and the battles that put Vallejo on the map, as the Mare Island Navy Shipyard played a crucial global role in World War I and World War II, among others.

In six bonus episodes added later, the two founders also interview interesting Mare Island characters who were part of the navy’s shipyard or have ties to Vallejo. The latest episode — an interview with Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn from the infamous documentary American Nightmare — broadcasted in January 2025.

The fascination of the two founders with Mare Island’s history started when Fortner bought and restored the historic officer’s Quarter U in Mare Island in 2007. As he learned more about Mare Island’s past, he created a business plan for a brewery that would be deeply linked to it. 

Fortner’s background was in winemaking in Napa, but he felt a winery wasn’t as well suited to Mare Island. “Wine customers really want to see vines on the hillsides, and when they see cranes, they don’t know what to think,” Fortner said, “while the brewing people I know are like, ‘Check out those cranes!’”

Gibbons concurred: “We both love the sort of blue collar industrial grit aspect of the brewing industry. And beer has a lower price point, so it can be enjoyed by more people.”

When the recession hit in 2008, Fortner shelved his plans, but a chance encounter in 2013 with Gibbons, whom he had met as a winemaker in Napa, brought them back to the forefront. Gibbons had left the wine industry a while back and was now brewing beer at Lagunitas Brewing Company, so he was a perfect potential partner. After a business lunch, he was on board.

In the first episode of the podcast, Fortner and Gibbons explain that the Ferry Tap Room on the Vallejo waterfront, which opened in 2014, was an immediate success. People would knock on the door while it was under construction to ask when they would open and rushed to it from day one. 

Part of this success came because the brewery filled a gap. “A tap room is a watering hole, a place for the community to come in and share time and ideas,” Gibbons said, “and I think that the city was lacking that kind of space at that point.” 

But the other part was that Mare Island Brewing Co. embraced and proudly displayed Vallejo’s history, from their name, logo and motto, “Damn the torpedoes” — Admiral Farragut’s legendary cry during the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay — to the name of their beers and the furniture and artifacts that populate their tap rooms, many rescued from old ships built on Mare Island.

“The town was devastated from the bankruptcy and the departure of the Navy,” Fortner said, “but its history was screaming to be told. Ryan says it frequently: we are a history company that sells beers. We make killer beer, and I can’t think of a better way to tell the history than on the side of labeled cans, the names of beers, and the stories we tell in the tours we do.”

“Napa used to be where you sent your crazy aunts and uncles to the asylum,” added Gibbons, “while Vallejo was glorious back in the day. Then it flipped entirely and people were so beat up. For something to come along saying, ‘Here's this proud history’… people just embraced that.”

The two founders have weathered many challenges during their journey, such as the difficult renovation of the Navy’s coal shed where they house their brewery, which opened in 2017 after two years of work. They had to deal with three layers of complications: California’s strict regulations, the engineering challenge of bringing up to code a historic building on infill land, and the developer who owns the land and the building who changed plans midway.

Surviving the pandemic was another big challenge, explained in episode 8. The founders’ strong friendship and great working relationship helped them overcome the tough spots. 

“We complement each other, we don’t compete with each other,” Gibbons said. “My role in the company is as general manager and Kent is the chief financial officer, in charge of permitting and the five-year vision of the industry and administrative machine. What I always like to say is that I am in charge of making the money and he is in charge of making it make sense.”

It helped that Gibbons is ten years younger than Fortner, and by the time he got married and had kids, Fortner’s children were grown up. “Now I can stay later and work on things,” explained Fortner, “whereas in the beginning I had to be home at 5 p.m. and Ryan was basically working 24 hours a day.”

Aside from their two tap rooms in Vallejo and a third on Benicia’s First Street, Mare Island Brewing Co. offers the Yardbirds Club, named for the nickname enlisted service members called civilian workers on Mare Island. Membership costs $250 a year and it includes three yearly shipments of exclusive beers, pick-up parties with catered food, games and live music, free tours of the Coal Shed brewery, and discounts for special events.

Fortner and Gibbons started Mare Island Brewing Co. with four employees and the Ferry Tap Room, which offered only four beers brewed in another company’s facilities. Today they have their own brewery, make over 20 beers (some available seasonally), and employ almost 90 people, most of them Vallejo residents. They don’t plan to expand to other cities, instead, they want to double down on what they have built in this community, focusing on sustainability projects such as reducing waste, and water and power efficiency.

Although they see a renaissance happening in Vallejo, and their company as one of the sparks, the city is still far from where it should be. They hope the Mare Island developer will soon break ground on other projects, so Vallejo can become a destination for all the Bay Area. But Fortner emphasized that the weight of making things happen will be carried by entrepreneurs like he and Gibbons. 

“No Navy, no government and no development is going to rescue us,” he said. “We have to be entrepreneurial, pick ourselves up from our bootstraps, be responsible for what we do, contribute to the community, make our own decisions and get going. And if you are willing to take a chance and jump in on something, you’ll find a very welcoming community.”