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Kegs of Boston-made beer at Row 34.
Opposite: Trillium Brewing Company
cofounder J.C. Tetreault.
GAME ON
Boston's beer scene just keeps
getting better and better.
Story by LAUREN CLARK
Photos by KRISTIN TEIG
september/october 2012
2014 ~ imbibemagazine.com 75
I
n what was once a gritty
neighborhood of warehouses
and windswept parking lots, the
Harpoon Brewery’s gleaming new
beer hall overlooks Boston’s inner harbor
on one side and a recently installed
canning line on the other. Nearby are
convention centers and hotels, the
Institute of Contemporary Art, tech
incubators and a battalion of marquee
restaurants—none of which existed
when Harpoon opened on industrial
Northern Avenue in 1987. “We’ve come
a long way from Polyester’s,” says cofounder Rich Doyle, referring to a backin-the-day nightclub where you might
have gone dancing after a dinner of
broiled scrod at Jimmy’s Harborside.
It was a different era in Boston, back before what
was simply the waterfront became the Seaport District.
With Harvard classmate Dan Kenary, Doyle started the
first brewery in Boston since Haffenreffer closed in 1965.
Their dream—in addition to providing their hometown
with its own beer—was to re-create the conviviality of
a European beer fest on the Boston waterfront. They
had block parties in the parking lot that would attract
a couple of thousand revelers for live music and kegs of
Harpoon IPA, Octoberfest and other beers. Unwittingly,
Doyle and Kenary were helping plant the seeds of the
waterfront’s revitalization—and along the way, they
became proprietors of one of the largest breweries in
New England. (In August, Doyle handed his CEO position
to Kenary, and Harpoon became an employee-owned
company.) “We’ve been doing our events and tours for 28
years,” says Doyle. “In some sense, we’re a destination.”
Bostonians have consumed their fair share of beer
over the past 400 years, and that tradition remains alive
as the city enjoys a newly thriving beer culture. Harpoon
and Samuel Adams were among the first in the modern
movement—the latter was founded in Boston in 1984 (the
beer was initially brewed in Pennsylvania, and continues
to be made in several locations), and today is the secondlargest American-owned brewery, after Yuengling. These
brewers introduced local drinkers to the appeal of wellmade beer, and inspired others to set up shop in the Hub
during the first wave of craft beer in the 1980s and ‘90s;
those veterans have been joined in recent years by nearly
a dozen new startups. Today, the Boston area has not
only more producers of quality beer than ever before,
but enough beer bars, beer-focused restaurants and
specialty shops—such as the fast-expanding Craft Beer
Cellar, which started in nearby Belmont—to keep the
adventurous beer drinker very busy.
76 imbibemagazine.com ~ september/october 2014
Not far from Harpoon sits a newer, smaller beer
destination. Envisioning a farmhouse brewery in
an urban setting, the Trillium Brewing Company’s
owners Jean-Claude (J.C.) and Esther Tetreault fixed
up a nook within a rundown building in the Fort Point
neighborhood in early 2013.
A handmade rig that fills four bottles at a time sits
near a dairy tank-turned-brewing vessel and a row of
wooden barrels in which beer matures. Among the
barrels are five massive, 500-liter sherry casks that
Trillium bought from the Samuel Adams pilot brewery
in Jamaica Plain. (Samuel Adams, which occupies the
former Haffenreffer plant and also operates a taproom
and beer history museum there, is known for lending a
hand to upstart Boston brewers.)
Named for a woodland wildflower that J.C. calls “a
symbol of symmetry and balance,” Trillium specializes
in rustic American pale ales as well as saisons, or Belgian
farmhouse-style ales, and also produces myriad limitededition brews. Some of the wild beers are fermented
with a mixed culture of wild yeast and bacteria cultured
from the grape skins of a Connecticut vineyard where
the Tetreaults married, and many also feature grain
from Valley Malt in western Massachusetts, one of the
first small-scale malting companies in the nation.
Like many among the region’s new wave of beer
entrepreneurs, J.C. never worked in a brewery before
he owned one—instead, he made the leap directly from
serious homebrewer to pro. Yet his skill is such that the
company has barely been able to keep up with demand
since the day it opened. “People here know beer,” he
says. “You can’t do mediocre.”
Beer in Its Blood
Boston has been a beer-drinking town since the
Massachusetts Bay Puritans brought barley and hops
with them from England and opened the American
colonies’ first licensed tavern in 1633. Some of the
Puritans’ first laws stipulated that tavern keepers
use decent ingredients in their beer (more barley, less
molasses) and sell it at a fair price—lest their fellow
churchgoers fall prey to “strong waters.”
Yes, the supposedly pleasure-spurning Puritans were
prodigious beer drinkers. When the Irish arrived in the
1800s and put their stamp on the Hub, they furthered its
beery reputation, as did a community of Germans who
settled in the Roxbury and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods.
By 1900, Boston had the most breweries per capita of
any city in the United States.
All the way up to and after Prohibition, Boston
uniquely remained a two-beer town. While most of
the country had long abandoned old-style British and
Irish ales for the sparkling lagers German immigrants
brought to America, New Englanders demanded both
categories of brew. New England ale finally died out
around the 1950s, but it made a comeback when the
first microbreweries opened in the region in the ’80s.
Today, the comeback continues.
Top left: A round of beers
at Row 34. Bottom left: Will
Sullivan at Trillium Brewing
Company. Right column: Beer
and pretzels at Harpoon
Brewery.
Top left: J.C. Tetreault
of Trillium Brewing
Company. Bottom right:
A growler of Trillium’s
beer. Top right &
bottom left: Beer,
oysters and good
company at Row 34.
With the latest wave of craft brewing continuing to
swell, beer destinations dot metro Boston, serving dozens
of styles of locally made ale and lager. They are downtown,
nestled between Revolutionary War landmarks and the
business district. They are stationed along the MBTA Green
Line, starting near Fenway Park and stretching into studentdominated Allston and well-to-do Brookline. They slake
the thirsts of scholars and tech-industry entrepreneurs in
Cambridge. They share sidewalks with triple-deckers and
Latino markets in Jamaica Plain. And they have transformed
drab industrial spaces in South Boston, Chelsea and Everett.
Next door to Trillium in the Fort Point neighborhood, a
new oyster bar, Row 34, has made its mark by not only serving
dishes that bring out the best in local seafood but also by
curating an offbeat and uncompromising beer list. One week’s
draft list featured a Trillium ale, an unfiltered lager from
Mahr’s in Germany, a Belgian-style strong ale from Allagash
in Maine, a sour ale from Birrificio del Ducato in Italy, and a
Czech black lager called Černé Pivo. At only 4 percent alcohol
by volume, the latter beer is a “session” brew—chuggable,
balanced, flavorful—and it’s not actually from the Czech
Republic, but from the local Notch Brewing Company.
While every well-known craft brewer seems to be
putting out a session beer these days, Notch, which
launched in 2010, blazed the category’s trail. Owner Chris
Lohring, who brews for Notch at the Ipswich Ale Brewery
just north of Boston, was the first to produce exclusively
low-alcohol beers in response to all the boozy double IPAs
that comprise, in his words, the “extreme-beer movement.”
Among his other creations are Notch Pils, Left of the Dial
IPA, and Valley Malt BSA, named after the Brewer Supported
Agriculture program that Valley Malt created to encourage
farmers to grow grain for brewers.
Lohring, who made a name for himself producing
English-style ales in the 1990s at the Tremont Brewery in
Charlestown, says session beer was not an easy sell at first.
“Younger consumers didn’t understand why you would
want less alcohol,” he says. “Those in their twenties have
been raised on high-alcohol beer. My [customers] are more
mature. When I understood that, that’s when Notch started
to have a little more success.”
Close to Home
“I love our tight-knit craft-beer community here in Boston—
we all seem to support each other with the same end game
in mind,” says Dave Ciccolo, owner of the Publick House in
Brookline, one of metro Boston’s most popular beer bars.
Vacations in Belgium inspired Ciccolo, a former
Tremont brewer, to open the Publick House in 2002 and, a
few years later, an adjacent taproom called the Monk’s Cell.
He filled the place with Belgian beer signs and memorabilia
and served Trappist ales, lambics, saisons and the like in
their own signature glassware. “The room, and all it offers,
is a combination of all my favorite café experiences [in
Belgium],” he says.
The concept has succeeded wildly. In 2007, the Belgian
Brewers Guild was so impressed with Ciccolo’s role in
popularizing the nation’s traditional ales that it honored
him with a Knighthood of the Brewer’s Mash Staff.
BOSTON-AREA
BREWERIES
TRILLIUM BREWING COMPANY
369 Congress St.
trilliumbrewing.com
MYSTIC BREWERY
174 Williams St., Chelsea
mystic-brewery.com
IDLE HANDS CRAFT ALES
3 Charlton St., Everett
idlehandscraftales.com
NIGHT SHIFT BREWING
87 Santilli Highway, Everett
nightshiftbrewing.com
SAMUEL ADAMS
30 Germania St.
samueladams.com
HARPOON BREWERY
306 Northern Ave.
harpoonbrewery.com
AERONAUT BREWING CO.
14 Tyler St., Somerville
aeronautbrewing.com
PRETTY THINGS BEER & ALE PROJECT
(brewed at Buzzards Bay Brewing,
98 Horseneck Rd., Westport)
prettythingsbeertoday.com
NOTCH BREWING COMPANY
(brewed at the Ipswich Ale Brewery,
2 Brewery Place, Ipswich)
notchbrewing.com
JACK’S ABBY BREWING
81 Morton St., Framingham
jacksabbybrewing.com
SLUMBREW (SOMERVILLE
BREWING COMPANY)
(brewed at the Ipswich Ale Brewery,
but a brewery and taproom will open in
Somerville in late 2014)
slumbrew.com
BACKLASH BEER COMPANY
(brewed at the Paper City Brewing Co.,
108 Cabot St., Holyoke)
backlashbeer.com
BANTAM CIDER COMPANY
40 Merriam St., Somerville
bantamcider.com
september/october 2014 ~ imbibemagazine.com 79
BREWPUBS
CAMBRIDGE BREWING COMPANY
1 Kendall Square, Cambridge
cambridgebrewingcompany.com
JOHN HARVARD’S BREWERY
AND ALE HOUSE
33 Dunster St., Cambridge
johnharvards.com
BOSTON BEER WORKS
61 Brookline Ave. and
112 Canal St.
beerworks.net
WATCH CITY BREWING COMPANY
256 Moody St., Waltham
watchcitybrew.com
BEER BARS
DEEP ELLUM
477 Cambridge St.
deepellum-boston.com
PUBLICK HOUSE
1648 Beacon St., Brookline
thepublickhousebeerbar.com
LORD HOBO
92 Hampshire St., Cambridge
lordhobo.com
STODDARD’S FINE FOOD AND ALE
48 Temple Pl.
stoddardsfoodandale.com
THE TIP TAP ROOM
138 Cambridge St.
thetiptaproom.com
MEADHALL
4 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
themeadhall.com
THE LOWER DEPTHS TAPROOM
476 Commonwealth Ave.
thelowerdepths.com
80 imbibemagazine.com ~ september/october 2014
But the Publick House has never been about just imports.
Ciccolo has always curated a list of what he considers the
best of American craft brews—and, increasingly, those
beers come from Massachusetts. The bar was among the
first to dedicate taps to Trillium, for example, and, earlier,
to an oddly named enterprise that was key to reviving
Bostonians’ interest in locally produced beer: Pretty Things
Beer and Ale Project.
Dann Paquette and his wife, Martha Holley-Paquette,
started Pretty Things in 2008. Paquette, who, like Lohring,
began brewing in Boston in the early 1990s, had a
peripatetic career after the craft-beer “crash” at the turn
of the millennium. He and Holley-Paquette even moved to
her native Yorkshire, England, for a few years, absorbing the
traditional ale culture there.
Upon returning to the U.S., they launched Pretty Things
and put all their savings into making a batch of their
flagship beer, a hoppy saison called Jack d’Or. Luckily, that
batch made enough of a profit to fund a second, and then
a third, and so on. In addition to making Belgian-inspired
beers, Paquette and Holley-Paquette regularly team up
with British brewing historian Ron Pattinson to produce
a series of styles based on forgotten English beer recipes
from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
A new crop of restaurants and bars passionate about
local, seasonal food and drink was then emerging in
Boston, and they eagerly embraced Paquette’s distinctive
brews. One early proponent of Pretty Things was the 30seat Jamaica Plain restaurant VeeVee, owned by Dan and
Kristen Valachovic. “The whole package of what they were
doing was what I like about beer,” says Dan Valachovic.
“Their branding, their interesting flavors—they run the
whole gamut of the beer spectrum, they don’t pigeonhole
themselves.”
Max Toste, co-owner of the Allston beer bar Deep Ellum,
also praises local brewers, such as Pretty Things, Trillium,
Notch and the Mystic Brewery. “What’s happened locally
has changed what I have on tap,” he says. “We sell a lot of
local beer.”
A long, vintage bar room named for a neighborhood in
Dallas (co-owner Aaron Sanders’ hometown), Deep Ellum
might feature Pretty Things’ American Darling Lager,
Mystic’s Saison Renaud and Harpoon’s Boston Irish Stout
on tap alongside rare brews from little-known producers in
Britain, Germany, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. (You
can also get an expertly made classic cocktail if that’s your
preference.) “There’s a much more educated [beer drinker]
in town now,” Toste says, compared to when he and Sanders
opened Deep Ellum in 2007. “When you get college-age kids
and their girlfriends excited about drinking beer that isn’t
just cheap and plentiful, that’s great. It’s enabled us to sell
more esoteric beers.”
“Esoteric” is a good description of what Bryan
Greenhagen and his crew at Mystic Brewery are doing. They
occupy a cavernous warehouse in the working-class town
of Chelsea, where their Belgian-inspired brews ferment and
Deep Ellum co-owner Max Toste.
september/october 2014 ~ imbibemagazine.com 81
Clockwise from this photo:
Beer and bites at Cambridge
Brewing; Mystic Brewery cofounder
Bryan Greenhagen; the tap lineup
at Trillium Brewing; the brew team
at Cambridge Brewing, from left:
Will Meyers, Jay Sullivan,
Alex Corona and Anthony Lauring.
age in barrels, bottles and stainless steel. Greenhagen—who
has a Ph.D. in plant biochemistry—cultivates yeast strains
like other people plant gardens. Each edition of his Vinland
line of specialty brews, for example, is fermented with yeast
originating from the skin of a New England fruit: a blueberry
from Maine, an apple from central Massachusetts. Mystic
also produces several dry saisons in which wild, native
yeast strains make art out of malted barley. Greenhagen’s
goal is also to produce gueuze, a sour, sparkling beer that
properly takes years to mature.
Mystic is among a handful of small breweries that have
recently set up shop just north of Boston, where rents are
cheaper. In the town of Everett, which neighbors Chelsea,
the Idle Hands and Night Shift breweries launched in 2011
and 2012, respectively. Like Mystic—and unlike Trillium in
South Boston—the taprooms in these towns have special
licenses to sell samples of beer to visitors, in addition to
packaged beer. Night Shift just opened a striking 80-seat
taproom that serves brews such as a stout made with Taza
Chocolate, produced in nearby Somerville.
Future Brew
Two years ago, Greenhagen procured a truckload of barrels
from Napa Valley to use for aging beer. He shared them with
other craft brewers around New England, including Will
Meyers of the Cambridge Brewing Company in Cambridge,
near MIT. Working for the brewpub’s owner, Phil Bannatyne,
Meyers has kept CBC at the vanguard of craft brewing for
most of its 25 years. He has trained several brewers who
have gone on to start their own enterprises, including
Ben Roesch and Megan O’Leary-Parisi, of the Wormtown
Brewery in Worcester, Massachusetts. (I worked as an
assistant under Meyers during my brief brewing career in
the late 1990s.)
At CBC’s quarter-century celebration earlier this year, a
genial crowd gathered on the brick patio, listening to live
bluegrass and sampling 25 different beers made on the
premises. The offerings included amber and India pale ales,
porters and stouts, Belgian tripels and grisettes, a Vienna
lager, and odd barrel-aged beers such as Ozymandias, a
sour, dark ale with blackcurrant and elderberry, and named
for a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem.
These days, when Meyers isn’t commuting to a local
production brewery to make CBC beers like Flower Power
IPA and Remain in Light Pilsner for bottling and canning, he
continues to experiment at the brewpub. Recently, Kristen
Sykes, a homebrewer who leads the Boston-Area Beer
Enthusiasts Society (BABES), came to Meyers with an idea
to take an invasive plant, Japanese knotweed, and make a
beer with it. (The plant is edible and tastes like rhubarb.)
Meyers not only agreed, but invited Sykes to come in and
help brew the beer. The result was a slightly sour, quenching
ale akin to a Berliner weisse.
Sykes and Meyers called their creation Olmsted’s
Folly—so-named because Frederick Law Olmsted, the New
Englander who designed many of America’s most famous
parks, is thought to have introduced Japanese knotweed
as a decorative plant. The beer’s name is fitting for another
reason: Olmsted is a direct descendent of those beer-fueled
Puritans who started it all back in the 17th century.
BEER BARS
(CONTINUED)
ATWOOD’S TAVERN
877 Cambridge St., Cambridge
atwoodstavern.com
BUKOWSKI TAVERN
50 Dalton St., Boston and
1281 Cambridge St., Cambridge
bukowskitavern.net
FIVE HORSES TAVERN
535 Columbus Ave., Boston and
400 Highland Ave., Somerville
fivehorsestavern.com
JM CURLEY
21 Temple Pl.
jmcurleyboston.com
BRENDAN BEHAN PUB
378 Centre St.
brendanbehanpub.com
SUNSET GRILL & TAP
130 Brighton Ave.
allstonsfinest.com
REDBONES BARBECUE
55 Chester St., Somerville
redbones.com
CAMBRIDGE COMMON
1667 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge
cambridgecommonrestaurant.com
BEER-FOCUSED
RESTAURANTS
ROW 34
383 Congress St.
row34.com
VEE VEE
763 Centre St.
veeveejp.com
PICCO
513 Tremont St.
piccorestaurant.com
THE INDEPENDENT
75 Union Sq., Somerville
theindo.com
september/october 2014 ~ imbibemagazine.com 83