Maine Malt House

The Bangor Daily News has published an article on the Maine Malt House, which supplies malted Maine grown grains to brewers in the state.

Aroostook County is not home to the bustling craft breweries that have sprouted up across Maine, New England and other parts of the country. A brewery and pub that opened in Presque Isle in 2004, Slopes Northern Maine Restaurant and Brewing Company, closed for lack of business not long afterward. But, 10 years later, the Buck brothers are not trying to sell beer locally; they want to produce and sell malts across the state through an integrated farm and malthouse business.

Under Construction: Lone Pine Brewing

lonepine_logoA new brewery called Lone Pine(website, facebook, twitter, instagram) is under development in East Bayside, according to a report from Eater Maine. The brewery is going in at 219 Anderson Street at the former location of Pistol Pete Upholstery Shop.

Lone Pine Brewery is the project of Tom Madden from Madden Beverage in Saco. He hopes to open Lone Point this winter.

Need to get caught-up on all the new places under construction? Check out the our Under Construction list for the latest details.

Growth of Maine Beer Industry

The Bangor Daily News has published an article on the growth in the Maine beer industry.

New crowds are trekking to hidden places across the state, such as Bigelow Hill in Skowhegan, where chocolate chili stout is paired with wood-fired pizza, and to Marsh Island Brewing Co., which is located in an Orono auto repair shop where wheels are aligned and Downrigger IPA is brewed and bottled under the same roof.

Breweries in Maine are revving up so fast and furiously that Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Maine Brewers’ Guild, is having a hard time keeping up with marketing material.

New Geary’s Brewer

The Press Herald reports on Geary’s new brewer Ben Rossignol.

When I visit the brewery to talk with Geary and Rossignol there’s a session IPA brewed with Jarrylo hops and American ale yeast on draft at the tasting room. It’s the first beer brewed with American ale yeast since Geary’s opened in 1986. This single-hop IPA has a fruity aroma of pears, bananas and oranges. The flavor is a fruit cocktail mixture that Rossignol says tastes like a “Dole fruit cup.” I agree. And it’s good.

The next experimental beer that will be on tap at the tasting room is a saison brewed with seventy pounds of strawberries from a farm in Limington. A saison? From Geary’s? With strawberries? Yes, yes and yes.

Celebrator Beer News

celebratorThe August/September issue of Celebrator Beer News includes a survey of the Portland beer scene (page 21).

 When many people hear “Portland craft beer,” they immediately think of Portland, Ore. But New England’s Portland also has a great deal to offer. For the first few months of this year, I found myself working on a project in our country’s original Portland during its stormiest winter in years.

The article mentions Geary’s, Allagash, Bissell,  Rising Tide, Foundation, Austin Street, Great Lost Bear, Novare, Bunker, Maine Craft Distilling and many more brewers, brewpubs and restaurants.

Interview with Heather Sanborn

The Portland Phoenix has interviewed Heather Sanborn, co-owner of Rising Tide.

KB: You have a small rack of barrels aging in the back of the brewery. Will that be a bigger part of your model going forward, or are your barrel-aged beers more of a side project?
HS: I think that remains to be seen. Right now we don’t have more space for barrel aging, but that’s about to change. We have a 8,000 square foot warehouse in Westbrook that’s coming online in about three weeks. We just hired somebody to manage it and we leased a box truck that we’re going to use to bring things back and forth. So we should have a lot more space for barrel storage soon. Then it’s really just a process of ramping up that barrel program over time. It takes a long time to build up a successful barrel program at any kind of scale.

Peak Organic’s National Reach

The Boston Globe has a report on Peak Organic’s expansion into markets across the country.

Peak products are now available in cities beyond New York; they’re all along the East Coast and in California, reflective of their 29 percent overall growth in 2014. Cadoux credits the expansion to thriving restaurant scenes in Miami, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Boston, and a sales staff focused on selling the brew as a good beer for food.