Hop To It!

Bill and Christine Heaton realized they had a challenge ahead of them when they entered the 2005 Wing Fling. The couple had recently purchased a defunct brewpub in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and decided to introduce themselves to the community by participating in the Pittsfield Family YMCA’s annual fundraiser, offering chicken wings, not beer. “We had our name out,” Christine recounts, “and more than one person said, ‘What’s a brewpub?’”

Bill had doubted Christine’s sanity even before that inauspicious reception. It was she who determined that Pittsfield would be an ideal locale for them to spread the gospel of good beer from what Bill calls “the fertile crescent of brewing,” in and around Philadelphia, where they met at Victory Brewing Company when he hired her as a brewer. Christine had happened upon North Street in 2004, during one of several scouting trips in search of a promising New England location. “I drove through Pittsfield during Sheeptacular,” she recalls, citing the city’s vibrant public art festival. “There were so many people out—it was bustling. It seemed like a really hip town. I went back to Philadelphia and said, You have to come back and see this town.” But Pittsfield didn’t look all that hip to Bill by the time she got him there. “There were no sheep,” she says. “Bill thought I was crazy!”

Bill interjects: “It was mud season. It was gray; everyone was all bundled up.” They did find that Pittsfield already had a brewpub, but the sign over the door of the Fighting Parson on Depot Street read: Closed indefinitely.

Back home, the couple learned that the Depot Street building was for sale, so they tracked down the realtor and expressed interest in buying it. In March 2005, they moved north and opened Pittsfield Brew Works, a dream come true for the couple, both of whom had delved into home-brewing during college. Having majored in chemistry, Christine realized she hated labs and decided to turn her hobby into a vocation. Though brewing was historically women’s work—from the birth of beer in ancient Sumeria through the late eighteenth century—Christine found that she wasn’t taken seriously when working at brewpubs, so she earned a degree in brewing technology from Siebel Institute of Technology and World Brewing Academy, taking courses in Chicago, Illinois, and Munich, Germany.

“That got [my] foot in the door in places,” she notes. Bill, a fine arts major, also followed his passion for brewing, giving up a career in advertising to enter the beer industry at the bottom of the barrel, literally: cleaning kegs. By the time he hired Christine in 2000, he had worked his way up to head brewer at Victory, four years before they left Philly to follow their dream: making their own beer and introducing it to the public.

Fortunately, their Wing Fling worries proved unfounded. Their high-ceilinged, brick-walled pub with a cavernous chamber of booths on one side and a long bar on the other just celebrated its fourth anniversary. The couple wed last November, after having expanded Brew Works to add a Bier Hall with pool tables and second bar with a hand-pump for cask-conditioned beer, open on weekends and for special events. Tuesday Night Trivia and live music on Wednesdays and Saturdays frequently pack the house, but the popularity of Brew Works is due primarily to its masterful brews, of which eight to ten are usually on tap. Brew Works produced three hundred and fifty barrels in 2008; they expect that number to total four hundred for 2009. (One barrel equals thirty-one gallons.)

“Our system is too small when it gets really busy,” Christine says. “We sometimes can’t keep up with brewing, and during those times we drop down to six or seven of our beers.” (But they still keep the taps flowing with “guest beers” from other regional craft brewers.) Perennial house-brewed selections range from Dohoney’s Gold—a light ale—to Gerry Dog Oatmeal Stout, a rich, creamy quaff with hints of chocolate and coffee, attached to a good cause: each purchase nets twenty-five cents for the Berkshire Humane Society. The Chosen Ale, a fall favorite, incorporates hops grown nearby at Hancock Shaker Village.

While most Brew Works beers range from 5 to 6 percent alcohol by volume, the Legacy India Pale Ale reaches 6.7 percent. Some seasonal brews push the limits; the stronger-than-traditional Oktoberfest brew, Octo-Bock, comes in at 8 percent, while GerryBaum—a Russian Imperial Stout—packs a wallop at 9.2 percent. In October they brew five barrels of their winter specialty, Bee’s Knees Barley Wine—using honey from Bear Meadow Apiary in Ashfield, Massachusetts—which goes on tap in November and measures up to about 11 percent alcohol by volume. Even with a limit of two ten-ounce goblets per customer, it’s finished before Christmas. “Anytime we do something special and strong, it’s gone pretty fast,” says Bill.

High-alcohol seasonal ales are also a hit at Barrington Brewery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where the limited-edition, 9 to 12 percent ABV Yule Fuel is available the day after Thanksgiving and gone by New Year’s Eve, even with a similar limit at the bar. “I actually think two pints is too much,” admits co-owner Gary Happ, who founded the popular downtown Great Barrington watering hole 20 Railroad Street in 1977, before opening the region’s first brewpub. “We’ve educated people about the Yule Fuel, and people have come to respect it. People come from all over to buy it.”

Education seems to be part of the brew-pub business; both Brew Works and Barrington Brewery have faced customers put off by the absence of their regular pour. “They’d come for dinner and leave because they couldn’t have a Bud Light,” recounts Christine, who now courts the discontent by letting them taste-test brews. “We learned to automatically offer samples.” Adds Bill, “As long as people don’t have to commit to it financially, they’ll give it a try. It gets people to expand their horizons.” Happ’s business partner and brewmeister Andrew Mankin describes similar resistance when Barrington Brewery first opened, noting that his Blond Ale “… usually satisfies the Budweiser drinkers. We’ve converted a lot of people over the years.”

Mankin was a regular at 20 Railroad Street during Happ’s tenure. When Happ sold it in 1993, the restaurateur thought he would get “a regular job,” but he was still figuring out what that might be when a friend told him he should open a brewpub. He remembered hearing the same thing from Mankin, an avid home-brewer. “That was in the late eighties,” recalls Happ. “I didn’t know what a brewpub was.” But in the mid-1990s, the idea seemed right, so Happ tracked down Mankin’s phone number and paid him a visit. “I went to his house on a Sunday afternoon,” recounts Happ, who was stunned to find Mankin’s kitchen overrun with brewing equipment. “He poured me a pale ale, and it was the best pale ale I’d ever tasted. Then he poured me a brown ale, which was the best brown ale I’d ever tasted. We ended the night with a ten-ounce stout.”

Mankin remembers. “We really didn’t know each other that well,” he recalls, but that evening, “… he realized that I did know what I was talking about.” Justifiably so: after Mankin’s sister gave him a home-brewing kit while he was in college, he further honed his skills in 1988 during a five-month apprenticeship at Vaux, a major brewery in northeastern England. “That sent me over the edge,” Mankin says.

That evening, the pair realized they had a winning recipe. “Andrew made great beer, and I had run a restaurant,” says Happ. “We started to put together the idea of opening a brewpub.” They opened Barrington Brewery in May 1995, with several of Happ’s former employees from 20 Railroad Street on staff. During the warm months, guests dine in either the rustic, barnlike interior or in the beer garden, a pleasant outdoor courtyard, where vines of hops lace the brewery’s exterior walls. In September, the homegrown hops are harvested and used in Mankin’s English Ale, one of about twenty different styles of beer on tap throughout the year.

Happ and Mankin have gone greener than just using local ingredients; Barrington Brewery boasts the largest solar hot water system in western Massachusetts, powered by thirty solar panels on the roof. Thus far, harnessing the sun to heat water for brewing, cooking, and cleaning saves about $350 per month, which translates to a financial payback of about twelve more years, at today’s energy prices. Regardless, “It was the right thing to do,” Happ says. “If we’re going to talk the talk, we’re going to walk the walk.” Adds Mankin, “You have to look at the big picture. At some point you have to put your money where your mouth is. So now we have solar-brewed beer.”

The northernmost stop on the Berkshire ale trail arose not from a beer-lover’s dream but from an academic exercise. For his senior project at Western New England College, business major Mel Madison decided to draft a plan for a brewpub. He studied the industry in Maine, at Shipyard Brewing Company in Portland and Federal Jack’s brewpub in Kennebunkport; his father, retired from the food service industry, pitched in by taking an intensive brewing course and learning the craft with a home-brewing kit. Madison aced his project; it didn’t hurt that his department chairs got to sample his home-brewed beer.

Coincidentally, one of his professors had been a director of marketing at Miller Brewing Company. “He told me, ‘I think you’ve found your calling,’” recounts Madison, who heeded the call, opening Madison Brewing Company on Main Street in Bennington, Vermont, in February 1996, at the age of twenty-four.

Madison Brewing Company, with its modern, atrium-like storefront, is a family affair. “My dad does the brewing, my mom does the baking,” says Madison, who bartends and runs the business. Brother Mike waits tables. The brewery produces seven hundred barrels annually, with about six brews on tap perennially plus eight to ten seasonal selections each year. Madison is loath to name his favorite. Like his Berkshire peers, his preferences change with the weather; it’s usually a seasonal special that catches his fancy. Nevertheless, he’s clear on his clientele’s favorite: Old 76 Strong Ale, a dark-amber Yorkshire-style brew. Madison also incorporates local ingredients, using Vermont honey in Bucks Honey Wheat and local maple syrup in Taber Hill Maple Porter.

While fresh, artisanal beer is the primary attraction, Madison takes equal pride in his menu. He credits his Lebanese heritage for his kitchen’s Mediterranean accents, reflected in dishes such as tabouleh; scampi pasta with Kalamata olives, artichokes, and roasted red peppers; and the irresistible baked starter, You Had Me at Brie. More typical pub fare also makes the list, including bangers and mash (English sausages and garlic mashed potatoes with apple chutney), fish and chips, steaks, chicken wings, and burgers. Madison even offers a few gluten-free choices—a nod to his wife, who has celiac disease.

He describes his place as a family restaurant; while beer aficionados make a point of visiting, he says many diners—leaf-peeping tourists, families of Bennington College-bound students—have no idea they’ve wandered into a brewpub, despite the brewing tanks that dominate the dining room. “They ask if they’re for boiling maple syrup,” he says, laughing, “or they think they’re just for show.”

It’s the same at Pittsfield Brew Works, where imposing tanks flank the entrance, and at Barrington Brewery, where they form an elevated backdrop in the bar area. Hand-crafted beer is the calling card, but the food earns fans, too; menus offer affordable, high-quality, better-than-pub fare, and all have health-conscious options. Happ sources local produce from Taft and Equinox farms and serves local grass-fed beef; nearly everything is homemade. “Even our Belgian chocolate sauce is made from scratch,” he asserts.

While brewing came easy for the Heatons, running a restaurant did not; they recognized the need to upgrade their menu soon after they had established themselves in Pittsfield. “We wanted to go local, but we didn’t have the time to research it,” Christine says. To that end, they hired Joe Mazza, a New England Culinary Institute graduate who, at the age of twenty-two, had been the youngest chef at Legal Sea Foods in Boston.

After working at various upscale Boston restaurants, the lean, handlebar-mustachioed Mazza returned to his native Adams, Massachusetts, and cooked at Spice Restaurant in Pittsfield and Gala at the Orchards Hotel in Williamstown, Massachusetts, before landing at Brew Works, where he focuses on using local goods to produce superior comfort food and expand vegetarian choices.
 

Predictably, all three pubs feature their own brews in dishes such as beer-battered or -sauced finger-foods, ale-steamed mussels, beer-braised sausages, and ale-laced soups. They also stray from the tried and true: witness Madison’s Bird & Brat hoagie of bratwurst and chicken topped with beer-drenched sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese; Brew Works’ Smoked Sausage Gnocchi; and the Barrington Brewery Steak & Stout open-faced sandwich of stout-marinated sirloin on garlic bread with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and gravy. The most creative beer-drenched menu item may be Barrington Brewery’s Chocolate Stout Cake, which Happ proudly notes was featured in the fiftieth-anniversary issue of Bon Appétit. [OCTOBER 2009]

Though wine is her beverage of choice, Berkshire Living contributor Bess Hochstein has been known to quaff a few beers, especially if they’re fresh and locally brewed.

THE GOODS

Barrington Brewery & Restaurant
420 Stockbridge Rd./Route 7
Great Barrington, Mass.
413.528.8282

Madison Brewing Company
Southern Vermont Home-Brew Festival
October 3
428 Main St.
Bennington, Vt.
802.442.7397

Pittsfield Brew Works
Berktoberfest
October 3
34 Depot St.
Pittsfield, Mass.
413.997.3506

SIDEBAR

The Beer Next Door

Berkshire Brewing Company (BBC) founders, Chris Lalli and Gary Bogoff, hail from Monterey, Massachusetts. Founded in 1994, in a former cigar factory in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, BBC is a popular stop in the historic town, offering brewery tours on Saturday at 1. BBC produces up to 420 barrels per week, moving it out of the microbrewing category into what’s known as a regional brewery. BBC beer is distributed in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Varieties: Berkshire Ale, Drayman’s Porter, Lost Sailor India Pale Ale, Shabadoo Black & Tan Ale, Imperial Stout, River Ale, Coffeehouse Porter, Gold Spike Ale
Current Seasonal Selection:
Oktoberfest Lager

12 Railroad St., South Deerfield, Mass., 413.665.6600,
 

Chatham Brewing Company, launched in 2007, had a good start out of the gates; its Porter took the bronze medal for Best Beer in the Hudson River Valley at the 2007 Tap New York event. Find it on tap at many Berkshire pubs and restaurants, or pick up a half-gallon or keg at the brewery during “Growler Hours” on Saturday from 11 to 2, and see why they call it “Really Good Beer Behind Ralph’s Pretty Good Café.”

Varieties: IPA, Porter, Amber, and Maple Amber, which uses local syrup
New release: OC Blond, a refreshing brew made with orange zest and coriander

30 Main St. Rear, Chatham, N.Y., 518.392.7273