For Jim and Julie Shamburger, the owners and operators of Big Beach Brewing in Gulf Shores, beer isn’t just a labor of love - it’s how their love got started.

“We met over beer,” Julie said, with a laugh. “We were painting a house for beer. And he was impressed I could drink beer like a man.”

Jim and Julie have been married for 36 years and have four kids, all of whom are avid craft beer lovers just like their parents.

“We’ve enjoyed beer throughout our courtship and marriage,” Jim said. “More recently, whenever we would travel, be it in California, Colorado, Switzerland or wherever, we would kind of seek out breweries because they’re usually uniquely organic sort of places. Quite often, a mom and pop sort of place. A lot of times it’s a good place to go and find out about the area or strike up a conversation with the locals.”

About six or seven years ago, the couple’s youngest daughter gave Jim a home-brew beer kit for his birthday and the love of making craft beer began to brew into what would eventually become Big Beach Brewing.

“I started tinkering with it and it kind of went from one level to the next,” Jim said. “Then, we were doing parties where we would take beer to weddings or wedding receptions and stuff like that. We kind of put two and two together and said as much as the two of us and our family enjoys breweries and with 5.5 million visitors to our area every year, why wouldn’t a brewery be a good idea for the beach here?”

Julie said she thought it was always somewhat strange that there wasn’t already a brewery on the island, and after some changes to Alabama’s brewery laws in the last few years, the couple were able to move forward on bringing a brewery there.

“We knew we wanted to be in Gulf Shores,” Julie said. “Our other business, his dental business, is in Gulf Shores. Although we looked at both cities, we just tend to be drawn toward business here in Gulf Shores for whatever reason.”

The first site the Shamburgers looked at drew some controversy due to its proximity to an already established church. They began looking for another site, eventually finding what they were looking for on East 24th Ave.

“The city really wanted us down in this area,” Julie said. “The cost here was maybe a little higher than where we originally looked, but it was definitely doable.”

The design process was another family affair, as the building’s architect was a friend of the couple’s sons from Birmingham.

“Tyler Price just did a wonderful job,” Julie said. “He listened to all of the features we really thought were important and tried to help make them a reality for us.”

Julie added that her son also did most of the woodworking for the taproom, including the bar, tables, rolling bar and refinishing the doors, which were another part of the family’s history.

“They were on our home in the lagoon that blew away during Ivan, but we held onto them,” Julie said. “We had them in storage forever wondering what the hell we were going to do with these, so we decided to build a brewery so that we’d finally have a use for the doors. He brought them back to life.”

Both Jim and Julie love the personal touches to the building.

“It’s obviously some place we wanted to hang out,” Julie said. “We built it that way.”

Big Beach has five flagship beers that will remain constant throughout the year. Jim said the best seller has been the cream ale, the creation of their brewmaster Rod Murray.

“Rod came to us from a brewery up in Missouri and his signature has always been this cream ale,” Jim said. “He’s even won national awards for it, and he predicted that it would easily become the number one seller, which it has.”

Jim said the cream ale is so unique for this area.

“There’s not another cream ale like this in our market, possibly for hundreds of miles,” Jim said. “This is a special thing we’re able to offer.”

Other flagship beers include an IPA, a hefeweizen, a brown ale and the Dixie’s Heart Irish Red Ale that’s special to Jim.

“That red ale, I brewed for a long time myself, for about two years,” Jim said. “I wanted to have one of my own recipes as a permanent fixture on the schedule.”

julie said other beers will be worked through on a seasonal rotation, and she encouraged people to come try the selection and offer suggestions for what they might like to see.

“The fun thing about this is that we can just try things we want to try, and anyone can have input,” Julie said. “If you have a particular beer that you want us to try to brew, just say it. We’ll try to put in the lineup somewhere down the way. We’ve had a lot of people ask for black IPAs, so that’s coming up. Throw it out there and let us try to get our iteration of it back to you.”

Jim said he’d like to find ways to incorporate more locally sourced items into their beer as well. To that end, Big Beach currently serves the Satsumo Belgian Wit, a beer with a heavy hit of locally grown satsuma peels.

“ It’s similar to like a Blue Moon,” Jim said. “At the end of the boil, we took a whole bucket of satsuma skins to give it that kick - kind of like lemon zest when you do a recipe.”

The Shamburgers said they’ve been working to get their beer distributed in restaurants and bars across the area, and are now offered at places like Fishers, Shux on the Pier in Fairhope, Manci’s in Daphne and Felix’s Fish Camp out on the Causeway.

But Julie said they will always remain focused on creating the perfect product there at the brewery

“Our primary concern really is right here in this taproom on this island because, to me, that defines a lot of what craft beer is,” Julie said.

Both said they were working hard to think of new ways to draw the community in to the brewery, including more live music and special events.

“Any time we can have music out there, it’s always a draw,” Julie said. “We’re also trying to step into a new era by being dog-friendly, which we think people will enjoy and appreciate.”

Julie said they’re currently working with the city of Gulf Shores to try to bring some food trucks into the mix.

“We’re hoping the city will put the stamp of approval on that in the next month or so, so we can have them rotating through here,” Julie said. “Market that idea - this time it’s the burger truck, this time it’s the taco truck. It’s another kind of real popular entity that’s not really here in this area.”

One thing not allowed at Big Beach is any form of smoking on the premises.

“Because we are an indoor/outdoor environment, we’ve opted to go non-smoking here on the premises, as a foot forward,” Julie said. “When you’re in a tasting room, you want to be able to taste. It’s not just an anti-smoker thing.”

Jim has been working on special events involving small batches of beer aged in firkins, smaller casks that have to be carbonated in a different way than the larger batches brewed daily.

“Basically, with the firkin, we carbonate naturally and it tastes more like an old cask ale, kind of like from Great Britain or Ireland,” Jim said. “We’re going to start having limited batch tastings of this once a month. For Christmas, we had a Ho Hop Ho and a brown ale that had some orange and cranberry notes in it. Coming up, we’re having a ‘Did Phil See His Firkin Shadow’ event for Groundhog’s Day.”

The Shamburgers say they’ve been incredibly pleased with the public’s support for their business so far, and they hope to keep growing and improving as the years go by.

“This is a wonderful place to be able to have in our area, and we want it to be a special place for other families just like it is for ours,” Julie said.