Hard as it may be to believe, it’s been 10 years since Fairhope Brewing Co. brought the contemporary craft beer explosion to the Eastern Shore and Lower Alabama in general.

But you don’t need the detective skills of Batman to establish that it’s a fact. So the Mobile region’s oldest brewery will celebrate the occasion with two days of festivities this weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 14-15, Fairhope Brewing will offer live music, food trucks, souvenir glassware and 50 beers on tap. Some of those will be in keeping with the occasion’s Gotham theme: Look for Juice Wayne, a juicy IPA; Dark Knight, a vanilla bourbon porter; Holy Hops Batman, a West Coast IPA; Robin’s Tights, a pickle sour ale; and Poison Ivy, a four-pepper amber ale.

“It’s an exciting milestone for us,” said Brian Kane, who along with Jim Foley is a managing partner in Fairhope Brewing.

Prior to Fairhope’s opening on Jan. 6, 2013, southwest Alabama had been a craft beer desert. Mobile had the Port City Brewery in the ‘90s, but hadn’t had a functioning brewery since a successor, Mr. Jim’s Cannon Brewpub, closed in 2009. Those earlier business were constrained by laws dating back to Prohibition, but those had been loosened by a Free the Hops campaign. Significant legal changes started in 2009 and included the passage of a Brewery Modernization Act in 2011.

New craft breweries began sprouting up in Birmingham and Huntsville, but the Mobile area lagged. Fairhope had the region to itself for a couple of years before Big Beach Brewing opened in Gulf Shores. It was 2017 before Serda Brewing (now Oyster City) became the first of several to open in downtown Mobile.

In its 10 years, Fairhope has scaled up in more ways than one.

“We opened with two regular beers and one seasonal,” said Kane. “Now we have basically 14 beers plus either a cider or seltzer on tap at all times.” Five staples are brewed year-round, including the (Take the) Causeway American IPA, Cheap Sunglasses Kolsch and Judge Roy Bean American stout.

Cans are distributed all across Alabama as well as coastal Mississippi and much of the Florida Panhandle. Fairhope Brewing is developing a toehold in Louisiana as well, Kane said.

A “nerve wracking” expansion in 2015 brought a vast increase in manufacturing capacity. The old 10-barrel brewing system was dwarfed by the addition of a 30-barrel system with five 60-barrel fermentation tanks. The additional space opened the way for more expansion steps, including a canning line.

Looking back, there’s a seemingly small step among the big ones that Kane remembers with particular fondness: Fairhope Brewing’s first showcase in grocery stores.

Early bottling efforts were “a train wreck,” Kane said. “Probably for every case we bottled correctly, we had three-fourths of a case that was messed up.”

Once they worked out the kinks, the payoff was gratifying.

“When we first had our bottles, the first time we got them out for distribution they went to the Piggly Wiggly in Fairhope,” Kane said. “We got a big display right in the front. We all went there for a photo op and everything.”

Seeing his company’s product on tap in area restaurants and bars was a huge deal, Kane said. But seeing six-packs in the Piggly Wiggly made it real on a whole different level.

Over the course of 10 years, Fairhope Brewing has held its own as the craft beer world has changed – not to mention the world in general.

“Fairhope itself has grown a significant amount over our time, and that’s for good or bad depending on whom you want to ask,” he said. “For us, obviously, it’s good.”

“I think it’s a lot more, I’d say, stable right now,” Kane said of the industry. “We were the sixth brewery to start in the state, in general. I want to say we’re in the ballpark of 45 or so breweries now. … It used to be we could sit around a table and name all the [Alabama] breweries. We can’t do that anymore.”

“We’ve had a goal of keeping our beer fresh, keeping our brand fresh,” he said. “It’s a tough business in that … as you get older in an industry like this, the challenge is always to be innovative enough to keep yourself relevant with everybody.”

For the next 10 years, Kane predicted, Fairhope Brewing will continue to put new flavors on tap.

“Sometimes they hit, sometimes they’re going to fall flat a little bit,” he said. “But we’d rather take that risk of doing something a little different, a little out there.”

Fairhope Brewing’s 10th anniversary celebration takes place from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, and 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, at 914 Nichols Ave. Bleus Burger and Divine Empanadas food trucks will be on hand. For information visit www.fairhopebrewing.com. A schedule of times for the tapping of several dozen small-batch specialty beers can be found at www.facebook.com/FairhopeBrewing.

Entertainment includes performances by Rashad the Blues Kid (1 p.m. Saturday), Van Down By The River (3:30 p.m. Saturday), East L.A. Fadeaway (7 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday) and Bailiwick Brothers (1 p.m. Sunday).