Brewing in Maine

By Tom Major and David Geary

Maine was once a national leader in the temperance movement to outlaw alcohol. In the last 30 years, however, the Pine Tree State has been equally influential in the craft beer movement. Since 1986, when David and Karen Geary opened New England's first microbrewery, more than 50 breweries have opened in Maine. The state not only ranks among the top 10 for breweries per capita, it also boasts two of the 50 largest craft breweries in the country. The personalities and visions of the brewers are as diverse as the beers they create. Some have opened their breweries in the hulking mill complexes of Lewiston and Biddeford or the former factories of Portland. Others have brewed at the scenic mountain resorts of Sugarloaf and Sunday River or on the quaint, historic wharves of Belfast and Kennebunk, and even on distant Monhegan Island. Farmstead breweries have sprung up from Skowhegan to Lyman, while the state's industrial parks are no less fertile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781439656327

Tom Major

Tom Major has traveled throughout his home state, gathering photographs and interviewing brewers to review 30 years of wicked-good beer and the folks who make it.

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INTRODUCTION

Since the dawn of agriculture, people have been making beer. Virtually every culture on earth has a brewing history. It is what we do as a species. We ferment. The earliest known depiction of two guys having a beer is on Sumerian clay tablets from 1800 BC. The tablets also include A hymn to Ninkasi, which details the process from grain to fermentation.

The fermentation process was little understood until the 19th century when Louis Pasteur detailed the role of yeast and bacteria in the process. Until that time, it was considered a blessing. In fact, the Middle English word for yeast is goddisgoode.

I began my brewing journey more than 30 years ago when I met Peter Maxwell Stuart, the 20th Laird of Traquair. He was brewing beer in a restored 17th-century brewery at Traquair House in Innerleithen, Scotland. He was exporting a small amount to the United States and was in Portland to meet with importer Alan Eames, the founder of Three Dollar Dewey’s.

Stuart and I had a few meals together, and he talked at length about commercial brewing on a small scale. He suggested that I should consider doing it as well, and that he would welcome me to Traquair to work and learn. Two months later, I found myself on a flight to the United Kingdom.

I stayed at Traquair for a month, brewing, reading, and learning. The brewing vessels were made of oak from Lithuania, and the floor was stone. At the end of my stay, Stuart made telephone calls arranging apprenticeships in a half dozen breweries from Scotland to the south coast of England. Included were Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar, Strathalbyn in Glasgow, Bass in Burton upon Trent, and two brewpubs in London. At my last stop, Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, I met Alan Pugsley and asked if he would consider working with me in Maine, assuming that I could put it all together. He smiled and said that he would. Peter Austin, Ringwood’s owner and brewmaster, was also in the business of designing and fabricating small breweries. I brewed many times with the Peter Austin system (under the watchful eyes of Austin and Pugsley), so when the time came to commission a brewery, it made a lot of sense to go with the Austin system.

When I returned home, I started work on a business plan. There were only a handful of so-called microbreweries in the country at the time, but I got a lot of guidance from them in finding packaging, equipment, bottles, and fabricators.

Once the plan was complete, I started making calls to sell my idea. Trying to sell an idea that no one had ever heard of was a challenge to say the least. The reactions ranged from hasty rejections to laughter, but finally, we had the help we needed.

We began construction in 1986 and sold our first kegs of Geary’s Pale Ale in December of that year. When we started bottling, we made the rounds of retailers to make placements. For the most part, people embraced the idea, but our big break came when two supermarket chains mandated it for all their stores. There it was, one lonely six-pack sitting on a shelf in the cooler among the Buds, Millers, and a few imports. A couple of years later, Samuel Adams came to Maine, and we had a category!

Over the next decade, the craft brewing industry grew at a modest rate. In 1999, a correction took place in the market, and a significant number of breweries closed. I have a poster from 1987 showing the labels of most of the craft brewers in the country at the time. By 1999, approximately 50 percent of them had closed. The reasons were the usual culprits in any business: quality issues and profitability.

By 2009, that trend had reversed dramatically. Scores of breweries were opening all over the country, and openings were increasing exponentially. By the summer of 2015, there were 3,500 craft breweries operating in the United States. This has created obstacles and opportunities in the industry.

The most radical change has been with our distributors. Four or five years ago, when distributors had relatively few craft brands, having share of mind was manageable if not easy. Five years ago, our distributor in Massachusetts had 12 craft brands—now it has almost 80.

On the positive side, craft beer’s market share has nearly doubled in that time. Today’s craft drinker is more sophisticated and adventurous than 10 years ago. That means that brewers must