Founders Brewing Co.
Founders Brewing Co. was started in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1997 by homebrewers Dave Engbers and Mike Stevens, first under the company name Canal Street Brewing Co.; the Founders name came from the label of an early pale ale. After a move to larger premises on today's César E. Chávez Avenue the business grew into Michigan's largest brewery, with about 466,700 barrels in 2017. Spain's Mahou San Miguel took a 30 percent stake in 2014 and agreed to raise it to 90 percent in 2019. A second taproom in Detroit ran from 2017 to 2023.
Beers by Founders Brewing Co.
35 beers
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The recurring character behind the beers
Founders Brewing Co. brew a broad range across 8 style families.
Across these 35 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Founders Porter
Their beers place in the Top 72% of the catalogue on average, across 33 ranked beers. One clear standout well ahead of the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Founders Brewing Co.
Founders Brewing Co. was started in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1997 by homebrewers Dave Engbers and Mike Stevens, first under the company name Canal Street Brewing Co.; the Founders name came from the label of an early pale ale. After a move to larger premises on today's César E. Chávez Avenue the business grew into Michigan's largest brewery, with about 466,700 barrels in 2017. Spain's Mahou San Miguel took a 30 percent stake in 2014 and agreed to raise it to 90 percent in 2019. A second taproom in Detroit ran from 2017 to 2023.
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