Board Member
Chris Cramer is a past Chair of the CCBA and has been making beer in paradise for a living since 1989 when he and his business partner, Matt Rattner, co-founded Karl Strauss Brewing Company, the first new brewery to open in the city of San Diego in more than 50 years. Since then Chris has enjoyed continuously pioneering in San Diego’s craft brewing industry, opening the city’s first distributing brewery in 1991 and over the years adding seven more brewpubs. While the brewery’s distributed beer operations have remained focused on its home market of “Karlifornia”, Karl Strauss has grown to become one of the top craft brewers in the United States and in 2016 became the only Southern California brewery to win the prestigious “Best Mid-Size Brewery” award at the Great American Beer Festival for breweries with production of 15,000 to 6 million barrels. Chris takes particular pride in having introduced many Southern Californians to their first craft beer and in the knowledge that the DNA of Karl Strauss Brewing Company runs throughout the San Diego brewing industry; he has helped numerous friends and former teammates branch-off to follow their own brewing dreams, making San Diego’s thriving craft beer scene a much more fun and interesting place to work and play.
