Ypsi Alehouse co-founder Ted Badgerow received a Tom Burns Award for brewing trailblazers at the Michigan Brewers Guild Annual Conference on Jan. 9. 

Badgerow began homebrewing in 1979 and opened The Real Ale Company, the first microbrewery in the Midwest, in Chelsea in 1982. However, at that time, the laws allowed The Real Ale Company to produce and sell bottled beer, but not pints of draft beer, at the brewery. The brewery went under in just two years. Badgerow says it was like "the Stone Age" of microbreweries. 

"It was practically a glorified homebrewing operation we managed to get licensed," he says of The Real Ale Company.

Badgerow went on to run a homebrew supply store, Fermentations, in Ann Arbor, while also teaching “Homebrewing and World Beer Styles” for the University of Michigan. He took a break from the world of beer for a few decades to raise a family and then got back into it when he co-founded Ypsi Alehouse with David Roberts in 2016.

Badgerow earned his first silver medal from the brewers guild in the mid-'80s and has since racked up a number of bronze, silver, and gold medals for his beers. He particularly enjoys English and Scottish ales. His Lollybroch Scottish ale took both a gold and a bronze medal in 2024, with an older batch winning gold in the strong British ale category and a newer batch winning bronze in the Scottish ale category.

Badgerow says the landscape for microbrewing and homebrewing has changed a lot since he started. When he first started brewing, he could only get one or two types of yeast or other brewing supplies, and now he can access 100 or more strains of yeast. He says it's good that the American palate has broadened  as well.

"Historically, the American public was swindled with mouthwash, with the Velveeta on Wonderbread product," he says, referring to domestic beers in the 1970s.

Now in his early 70s, Badgerow hopes to buy an RV and visit microbreweries across the country with his wife, Kathy. He says he wants to create a microbrewing podcast with beer experts around the U.S., picking their brains about everything from their favorite strains of yeast to their preferred temperatures, and "all that stuff brewers love talking about."

Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township and the project manager of On the Ground Ypsilanti. She joined Concentrate as a news writer in early 2017 and is an occasional contributor to other Issue Media Group publications. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.

Photo courtesy of Michigan Brewers Guild.