For Doc Anzalone, M.D., getting back into the beer business was a dream come true.

After practicing medicine for 40 years, the 69-year-old Jackson Twp. resident and doctor is now in the craft beer business, an industry that has been experiencing surging popularity and exponential growth. He owns Anzalone Special Lager that is brewed at Lancaster Brewing Co. and that he delivers locally.

"If I'm not delivering, I'm making telephone calls. It fills my day," he said. "This is not work for me."

Dr. Anzalone is no stranger to the beer business. His family has a long history in the industry and he was exposed to it early.

His father, the late Anthony Anzalone, and his uncles owned a beer distributorship from 1938 to 1968. They sold Kaier's Beer that was brewed in Mahonoy City and sold throughout Luzerne County.

He used to load and unload beer trucks at his father's and uncles' warehouse starting when he was 14 years old.

After graduating high school, he attended Penn State University and graduated with a pre-med degree.

He later attended the University of Rome Medical School and did his residency at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital. He returned to his hometown, provided family medical care to patients and served as a physician for Wyoming Seminary and College Misericordia, now Misericordia University. He also was an emergency room doctor from 2002 to 2014.

The idea of getting back into the beer business emerged years ago while he was at a medical facility in Lancaster with another doctor. They were backed up with patients trying to complete physicals and they talked about what he would do if he wasn't practicing medicine.

"Right off the top of my head, I said I would do what my dad was doing: selling beer and being in the beer business," Dr. Anzalone recalled.

Dr. Anzalone said the doctor liked the story about his background and told him about his friend, Bill Moore, brewmaster at Lancaster Brewing Co., and suggested he talk to him and see if he would brew his beer.

A week later, he met with Mr. Moore and brought his wife, Barbara Anzalone, former Miss Pennsylvania USA and a former Rockette, and they tasted beer.

"We went through about 15 beers and we came up with a beer," Dr. Anzalone said. "We tweaked it and made it a little more like Kaier's, which is a little more ‘hoppy' than the beer he had me taste and here we are. We have Anzalone Beer. It's our beer and it's a lager beer. It's a fine Pennsylvania lager."

Today, Anzalone's Special Lager is sold in 27 counties in eastern Pennsylvania. There are two master distributors: Skerpon's Beverage in Sayre and Lamb Beverage in Coatesville. While Dr. Anzalone owns the beer business, he calls himself "chief cook and bottle washer."

"I'm doing everything right now," he said. "I have a license to deliver it. I have a license to do everything that I'm doing now. I'm the owner so I do the paperwork and I do all the ordering."

Mr. Moore said he gets a number of calls from people interested in owning their own craft beer, but he was impressed with Dr. Anzalone's family's history in the beer business. He doesn't usually see the same excitement that Dr. Anzalone has, he said.

"I understand his passion and why he was interested," Mr. Moore said. "A lot of people are trying to get in it now for the money because there is money in craft beer. He didn't want any of that. He had fond memories as a kid as part of his father's and uncles' business and it was a good story and it interested me."

They came to an agreement to brew the beer and he suggested that Dr. Anzalone start slowly to see what was involved.

Mr. Moore said the craft beer business is much different from his previous life as a doctor, but Dr. Anzalone is seeing the rewards and making many connections.

"It's not glamorous. It's hard work," Mr. Moore said. "He's working the market himself and he's seeing what is involved in building relationships with wholesalers and taverns."

Contact the writer: dallabaugh@citizensvoice.com