Tagged: craft beer

Recently Bon Appetit magazine posted a list of its 10 Favorite US nanobreweries – those are very small-scale commercial breweries that produce fewer than 2000 barrels a year.

On that top 10 list? Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

It’s yet another sign that the Granite State is a big player in the small brewery movement.

Smuttynose Brewery breaks ground tonight on its new facility in Hampton about 10 miles down the coast from its current location in Portsmouth.

Smuttynose says it’s moving to Hampton to support its growth.

The brewery has been creating craft beers in New Hampshire since 1994. After the company produced 15,000 barrels in 2006, its status changed from a ‘micro-brewery’ to a ‘regional independent brewery.’

But Smuttynose president, Peter Egelston, says there’s more to the move than acquiring more space.

It's a good time to brew beer in America. According to beer expert Julia Herz, U.S. brewing isn't just on the upswing, it's on top. "We're now the No. 1 destination for beer, based on diversity and amount of beers," she says.

But if you want to see the strength of America's beer industry, you may want to look past beverage giants like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. According to the Brewers Association, nearly 2,000 American brewers operated during 2011 — the most since the 1880s.

Starting a small business is always a challenge.  Starting a meadery? Yeah, that’s not easy either. Just ask Michael Fairbrother

“I talk to people about mead, and they go, ‘What kind of meat do you make?’ I’m like, ‘No, I don’t make meat. I make mead.’ And they don’t understand what that is.”

In 2010, Fairbrother opened Moonlight Meadery in Londonderry, NH.

He’s more than happy to explain that mead is a wine made from honey, not grapes. And like traditional wine, you can’t rush it.