The origins and continuing impact of Huntsville’s signature beer

Straight to Ale's Monkeynaut India Pale Ale. (Matt Wake/mwake)

Monkeynaut did exactly what it was supposed to do. Dan Perry, cofounder and president of Straight to Ale, makers of Monkeynaut India Pale Ale, says, “When we were getting started, there weren’t a lot of craft-beer drinkers in Huntsville. There were, but not as many as there are now.”

Compared to large corporate domestic beer brands, craft-beer is usually made by smaller breweries focusing on more traditional and adventurous styles, methods and flavors.

Perry continues, “We were thinking, as a brand-new brewery starting up we needed a signature flagship beer.”

A decade later, whether or not Monkeynaut is the best beer made in Huntsville is wildly debatable and subjective. But without a doubt it’s both STA’s signature beer and the entire city’s. The best-known locally made beer and the one most closely associated with Huntsville. By a long shot.

Straight to Ale's Monkeynaut India Pale Ale. (The Huntsville Times file photo/ Michael Mercier)

In the early 2010s, complex-tasting India Pale Ales, or IPAs, were and still today remain a highly popular style among craft-beer heads. But Perry says Straight to Ale’s founders, which also included Bruce Weddendorf, Chris Bramon and Rick Tarvin, wanted to do a more accessible version. A gateway beer if you will.

Originally, Perry says STA was aiming for something along the lines of Michigan brewer Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale. “It was,” according to Perry, “a calculated plan to make people not be scared of IPAs,” whose flavor mainstream beer-drinkers often equate to notes of beard and hints of lawn clippings.

“So, when we crafted that beer,” Perry says, “we specifically went and gave it more of a big malt backbone with the sweetness that counteracts the hops. The bitterness is there, but it’s cut with the sweetness. And amazingly, somehow it worked.”

Perry says early on STA went through 10 or 12 iterations of Monkeynaut trying to nail down the recipe. They switched out hops. Played with the amount of malt to get the sweetness level right.

Lots of trial and error on homebrew setups, like a rock band trying to find their sound. Later on, after STA started canning beers for commercial retail sales, they did around 200 cases on the first run, everyone pitching in.

When asked which founder came up with the definitive Monkeynaut recipe, he says, “Honestly, it was a group effort. We all had our own recipes and were tweaking them and working towards the end product.”

Like many long-running rock bands though, these days all the STA founders aren’t exchanging Christmas cards. Perry is the only one still involved. There’s been at least one lawsuit between the founders. Bramon went on to start another Huntsville brewery, Mad Malts.

The name Monkeynaut was inspired by Miss Baker, the squirrel monkey NASA launched into space in the 1960s to test early U.S. spacecraft, the development of which Huntsville aerospace engineers played a large role in.

Thankfully, Miss Baker returned to Earth safely. In her later years was housed at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where a young Perry saw her on an elementary school field trip, he says.

The original can design for Straight to Ale Monkeynaut India Pale Ale. (Matt Wake/[email protected]) bn

Monkeynaut’s fanciful original packaging was designed by Browan Lollar, guitarist for Birmingham R&B band St. Paul and the Broken Bones and, previously, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Several years ago, the brewery rebooted packaging/branding, Perry says, for retail display consistency and more streamlined look.

Straight to Ale’s name has a music tie-in too. As fans of Atlanta band Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ might guess, the brewery’s name is a reference to DNC’s signature tune, 1989 twangy rock ballad “Straight to Hell,” which decades later was covered by Darius Rucker for a country hit.

Dan Perry, cofounder and president of Straight to Ale. (Matt Wake/[email protected])

Over the years, Straight to Ale grew from just the founders making, packaging and selling their beer to around 100 employees. At one point, their beers were distributed as far as Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi too. In recent years, as more craft-beer breweries popped up all over, STA scaled back to mostly local and Alabama business.

In 2019, Straight to Ale purchased Tuscaloosa’s Druid City Brewing. The next year, Huntsville’s Salty Nut Brewing. “Without Monkeynaut, we wouldn’t have done the expansions that we’ve done,” Perry says. (In July, after our interview with Perry took place, it was announced Salty Nut was closing at the end of the month.)

Although Straight to Ale’s distribution isn’t as wide as it once ways, Miss Baker-adorned cans still get around. Perry says over the years, STA fans have sent him pics of them holding up a can of Monkeynaut in far away locations, even in front of the pyramids in Egypt. “I have no idea how they got it there,” he adds with a laugh.

Earlier this year, Los Angeles based culture news website Uproxx, which has millions of followers on Instagram and Facebook, named Monkeynaut one of their “most underrated beers to drink this spring.” That piece opined, “While many IPAs are trying to push the boundaries of bitterness, haziness, or just plain hoppiness, Monkeynaut has mastered something that most IPAs can’t: balance.

A decade after Monkeynaut was first released in cans, it remains Straight to Ale’s most popular beer. For years, Monkeynaut accounted for around 70 percent of their sales, although that’s decreased slightly, according to Perry.

“It’s still a very large portion of our business,” he says. “And although a lot of people will tell you we’ve changed it over the years, it’s still 99 percent the same recipe.”

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The origins and continuing impact of Huntsville’s signature beer