Down East tells the story of Allagash Brewing and Rob Tod. The article is an assemblage of interviews with Tod, former and current employees, customers and leaders in the industry.
Top-secret ingredients and MacGyvered dairy equipment. Old world wisdom and cutting-edge tech. Hollywood celebrity and cult cachet. It’s all part of the long, heady history of the curious beer that put Maine suds on the map.
Beer Advocate has named Battery Steele to their list of the 50 Best New Breweries of the past year.
On Portland, Maine’s Industrial Way, the avenue that birthed titans like Maine Beer Co. and Bissell Brothers, 2017 saw the beginnings of Battery Steele Brewing. The industrial setting, with shining tanks directly in front of consumers, harkens back to the craft breweries in years past. Co-founder Jacob Condon says Battery Steele is a product of exploration and “pushing the limits of ourselves and the beers we produce.” The well-received Flume is an 8 percent Double IPA brewed with English malts and Citra and Mosaic hops. Battery Steele also brews an IPA as part of its OnSight Experimental Series. In 2018, Condon says, the brewery will expand its physical space and “add some variety” to the hop-heavy lineup, which already includes Knox Bière de Garde and Telos Stout.
The Press Herald reports that Shipyard is planning to completely renovate its facility on Hancock Street, retaining the brewery and tasting room but replacing the rest of the building. The new structures will include a 105-room brewery/hotel aka ‘brewtel’.
According to planning documents given to the city last month, the existing brick brewery building and tasting room would be renovated. But the rest of the buildings on the 2-acre site – including the bottling plant – would be demolished to make way for the 105-room hotel, a three-story residential building with nine units at Hancock and Newbury streets, a large office building and a four-story garage for 360 vehicles.
Carla Jean Lauter has written an article about LD 1889, the law that enabled breweries to charge for samples, for the Press Herald.
Here in Maine, there’s another milestone that probably deserves to be recognized: the passage of LD 1889 in the Maine House and Senate. Signed and enacted in mid-April of 2012, LD 1889 laid the groundwork to fundamentally change the entire beer industry in Maine by allowing Maine brewers to charge for samples at their own breweries. While this seems trivial, its passage had cascading effects that have allowed the beer industry to become what it is today.
Allagash and Oxbow are releasing a collaboration beer this weekend named Wild Rivulet, “Wild Rivulet carries hints of citrus, wine-like aromas and a silky, dry flavor that’s augmented by tartness from its time in the foudre.”
Wild Rivulet will be available at Allagash and at the Oxbow Saison Day event.
The Press Herald checked in with Definitive Brewing on the upcoming launch of their Industrial Way brewery and how they hope to succeed in an increasingly competitive market.
[Michael] Rankin, the CEO of Definitive, rounded up a group of 11 investors and bought a building on Industrial Way, across the street from Allagash and next door to Foundation, Austin Street and Battery Steele breweries. Definitive hired Dylan Webber – a former top brewer at Maine Beer Co. and Mast Landing – to be the director of brewing operations. And Definitive is diving into the market with a 15-barrel brewhouse and four 40-barrel fermenters, which is enough to make more than 1,000 gallons a week.
Definitive Brewing is slated to open around Memorial Day.
Maine Beer Company has hired Steve Mills to be the CEO for the Freeport-based brewery, reports Brewbound.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Maine Beer Company,” Mills wrote to Brewbound. “I’ve known David and Dan since almost the beginning. They had such awesome vision for what they wanted Maine Beer to be: people focused, exceptional quality and supporting 1 percent For The Planet. And look at what they’ve built! It’s all about doing what’s right. I’m looking forward to contributing wherever I can.”
Mills is moving to Maine from Utah where he was the CEO of Uinta Brewing.
The Press Herald has published an article about Sebago’s new brewery and tasting room in Gorham. The new brewery is located on Route 25. It is slated to open to the public today.
For starters, it’s just bigger. The largest fermentation vessel at its previous location – about a mile away – made 1,240 gallons of beer at a time. Now it has two fermenters that make nearly 5,000 gallons at a time – and capacity to add two more just like them.
The Press Herald has published an article about Lone Pine Brewing’s expansion.
If head brewer and co-owner Tom Madden is worried about the change, he doesn’t show it – and talks about the expansion with eager optimism.
He has a reason to be confident. If Lone Pine had purchased equipment for a brewery of Sebago’s size, it would have spent months making decisions about how to set up the system and even more time attempting to test it and “do the math” to scale up its five-barrel recipes. But purchasing a working brewery’s equipment has a unique advantage. Its quirks and limitations are known, and its ability to produce excellent beer has already been realized in the hands of Sebago’s brewing and production staff.
Mast Landing and Battery Steele are releasing Ice Cream Imperial Stout, a new collaboration between the two breweries. The beer is brewed with “[h]undreds of waffle cones in the mash, lactose and a bucket of sprinkles in the boil, then conditioned on vanilla beans.”
Battery Steele also plans to release Onsight #3, which they describe as an “Oat IPA (6.5%) heavily hopped with Galaxy, Nelson and Rakau. Very soft, almost no bitterness and busting with notes of passion fruit, pineapple, mango and hints of pine”.