Like many American craft breweries founded within the last two decades or so, Firestone Walker started as the dream of two craft-brew enthusiasts. In 1996, brothers-in-law Adam Firestone and David Walker opened the brewery in Paso Robles in Central California, near some of the area’s top wineries, where it has continued to partially ferment and age its beers in 60-gallon oak barrels. Barrel fermentation and aging was a rare practice for American breweries at the time, although it has since become a more widely…