Breaking Barriers and Brewing Beer - Dock Street Brewery’s Rosemarie Certo Celebrates 40 Years of Redefining the Beer Business

Philadelphia, PA — Dock Street Brewing Company is turning 40 years old! The history of the beloved beer brand and woman-led company was built with passion and pride by an idealistic Philadelphia couple in the 1980s, who were hoping to make a difference in the world. Rosemarie Certo and Jeffrey Ware — one, a literature and philosophy graduate from Penn State and Moore College of Art and the other, an artist and sculptor — were looking to define their futures when they first started their precarious craft beer odyssey. Dock Street Brewery’s history is also closely tied to Philadelphia’s history, as well as boasting a story filled with “firsts”: the iconic beer brand is Philadelphia’s oldest independent microbrewery; it’s one of the country’s first post-prohibition craft breweries; and it’s one of the very few breweries in the world led by a woman.

“The company was named to honor Dock Street in the city’s Old City neighborhood, which at the turn of the 19th century was adjacent to one of the largest beer producing seaports in the U.S.,” said President and Founder Rosemarie Certo, who, along with Jeffrey Ware, are considered pioneers in the U.S. craft brewing industry and the visionaries behind one of the first microbreweries in the country. “Here, pirates and statesmen alike came to brew and drink the best beer that was being made anywhere at that time. At the center of Philly’s bustling seaport district, there was a tavern named Man Full of Trouble, which today is the only surviving colonial tavern in the city and also bears the name of one of our award-winning beers, Dock Street Man Full Of Trouble Porter.”

Certo and her then husband and business partner Jeffrey Ware founded Dock Street in October of 1985, and later went on to build and operate the company’s state-of-the-art brewpub between 1990 and 1999 at Two Logan Square, which was Philly’s first all-grain brewing facility in the modern age. At its height in the early 1990’s, the company produced more than 28,000 barrels of beer annually, which they distributed in 26 states (and Paris, France) making it at some point in the early microbrewing days the 5th largest craft brewery in the U.S. In 1999, her partner sold the company. In 2002 Certo had the opportunity to purchase Dock Street back from short-term owner Henry Ortlieb. After an extensive search for the right building, in 2007 she opened a pizza-centric brewpub with a wood-fired oven in an 110-year-old former firehouse at the corner of 50th Street and Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia. “By choice, I had no investors, and I leveraged everything that I owned to open Dock Street Brewery West.”

 

In 2019 the business expanded to a 10,500 square-foot production facility, taproom and beer hall located at 2118 Washington Avenue in Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood, followed by the introduction of a tasting room at 1229 N. Front Street in Fishtown in 2023. Dock Street has been under the guidance of a woman founder for 40 years. 25 years ago Certo became the sole owner of the business. It has also been a family affair — son Sasha joined for a while and daughter Renata Vesey has led the marketing efforts throughout the past decade. Renata, who is now vice president, is poised to take over the reins of the company. "I'm excited to navigate the challenges faced by our industry and to continue to grow our business, which will likely include additional products and eventually more locations," said Vesey. The 39-year-old was the driving force behind the Dock Street South location. "I recognized that Philadelphia’s Washington Avenue corridor was evolving and expanding around 2017, and felt it made sense to secure a sizable space to build a brewery that had enough capacity to serve the emerging neighborhood as it develops. The neighborhood responded as we had hoped, and today we’re thriving and so incredibly grateful for the community’s support. I’m really proud of what we’ve built there, and looking forward to expanding into other neighborhoods as we continue to evolve."

 

Certo acknowledges Dock Street’s humble and challenging beginnings. “We were homebrewers when we started. We began with a kit in the basement of our house. Jeff was an artist, and I was a Moore College of Art trained photographer. When we began craft brewing 40 years ago there was really no such thing as a good American beer – you had to buy an import if you wanted to drink good beer. But why couldn’t Americans make rich, full-bodied beers? We wanted to proudly brew high quality, innovative, handcrafted, delicious American beer.” They did just that. Full of passion and determination, a year later in 1986 Dock Street Brewing Company was awarded its first medal for its first beer: Dock Street Amber Ale, which placed third in the “Consumer Preference Poll” in the Great American Beer Festival behind Sam Adams Boston Lager and Boulder Brewing Company’s Festival Ale

 

Dock Street continues to garner awards and accolades for its ales and lagers as well as for their innovative and experimental styles. Dock Street was the first brewery to be granted “recipe approval” for brewing with wormwood, an herb previously untested in beer making and heretofore illegal because of its purported hallucinogenic qualities. That beer was a contemporary take on a vintage beer recipe called Viscount St. Albans Ale of Health and Strength.

 

Perhaps the most significant historical beer Dock Street brews is Man Full of Trouble Porter. “It’s a tasty, toasty and bright porter,” said Certo. It continues to attract medals as well as consumer admiration. Man Full of Trouble Porter is cherished not only for its adapted flavor profile but also for the history it possesses. It’s named after the still standing Man Full of Trouble Tavern in Old City of which Dock Street Brewery holds the trademark in the beverage and bar/restaurant/category.

 

Dock Street gained national and international attention for a beer created for the season finale of the popular AMC show The Walking Dead. It was conceptualized and formulated by Rosemarie’s son, Sasha Certo-Ware. Named Dock Street Walker, the zombie-inspired 7.2% ABV American Pale Stout was brewed with smoked goat brains and included organic raspberries to mimic the color of blood. The buzz on this brew was so significant that the cast of E News sampled it and provided on-air reviews during a March 2014 broadcast.

 

Back in the early 90’s, Dock Street protested unfair trade practices by positioning the Dock Street Amber Beer label upside down. The word PROTEST was emblazoned in red across the upside down label, and the neck label presented the reasoning behind the protest. At that time Dock Street was exporting to France, and by the time the product landed on the shelves of Galerie Lafayette, France’s largest department store at the time, the price had more than doubled. Dock Street took this action to make an international statement and demanded respect for small and large American beers. American beers needed to be given the same price reciprocity that was extended to beers imported into the U.S. The Dock Street protest caught the attention of national and international press, including the Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, and more. This bold move resulted in an invitation for Dock Street to take a seat at the table to represent the interests of the U.S. brewing industry in a Washington DC meeting during the Pre-Gatt (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations.

 

Certo said that many people thought the microbrewery concept would not work – but she and other microbrewers proved them wrong. This helped to change the face of the American brewing industry and the U.S. beer drinking culture. “Our Dock Street beers are now sold to the children of the parents who were a part of the pioneering efforts that changed the landscape of American beer drinking habits by buying high-end American craft beers. Our mantra continues to be ‘buy American, make local, buy local.’”

 

So many times throughout her journey, Certo was told it would be difficult to succeed in a man’s world. But four decades after playing a significant role in igniting the U.S.’s craft beer revolution, she’s proved them wrong. “It’s been a crazy, preposterous, challenging ride, but it was and still is big fun, said Certo. “This is my calling. This is my legacy, and if I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing. CHEERS!”

 

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