Beer Hear!: portsmouth

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Earth Eagle In Portsmouth N.H.

Podcast: Earth Eagle In Portsmouth (Flash)

Non-Flash podcast

Earth Eagle Brewings in Portsmouth, N.H. just doubled their brewing capacity -- from one barrel to two! While the size of the batches may be small, the quality of the beer, the creativity of the recipes and the heart that goes into it all is immeasurable.

Earth Eagle was founded by homebrew buddies Alex McDonald and Butch Heilshorn, who also happen to be brothers in-law. The brewery is attached to the A&G Homebrew Supply shop, owned by Alex and his wife Gretchen, which opened prior to the brewery, in 2011. The brewery began serving to the public in their tasting room in November of 2012, offering one-of-a-kind brews with an experimental angle. For these guys it's not enough to only make a good beer -- it has to be a good and interesting beer!

Alex of Earth Eagle, Dierdre, Jay, B.R.

The concept of the brewery seems to be to sell a great variety of non-typical beer styles directly to the public via 1- and 2-liter growlers. They've also created a cozy, unassuming tasting room/bar, where they sell samplers in 4-oz glasses and sampler flights of whatever six beers are currently on tap. And thanks to a soon-to-be implemented change in N.H. beer regulation, which was lobbied for by Alex, they'll be selling pints in the tasting room, as well.

On tap: Brown Ale, Gruit, American Wheat, another Gruit (with horehound), Black IPA and ESB (with Earl Grey tea)!

Alex and Butch have a keen interest in utilizing all manner of herbs, roots and spices in beer, and are avid brewers of gruit. When we visited in early September, they had the Josselyn's 1666 Ale on tap, made from one of the earliest known New England beer recipes and brewed with wormword, sassafras and molasses. They also recently brewed a gruit for a historical themed dinner at Portsmouth's Strawberry Banke, an outdoor history museum of the Colonial American era which, "through restored buildings, historic landscapes and gardens, and interpretive programs, tells the stories of the many generations who settled in Portsmouth, New Hampshire's "Puddle Dock" community from the late l7th to the mid-20th century."

And in case you were wondering about their name, "the qualities Native Americans attribute to the Earth Eagle (a.k.a. the common wild turkey) speak to our philosophy as brewers and business owners: ecological, charitable, resilient, and unconventional. 'Brewings' is our nod to the first brewers who made small batches for their families crafted from local grain, herbs, and yeast. At Earth Eagle Brewings we embrace a Belgian-inspired, pre-Reformation spirit where hops are but one of the hundreds of ingredients employed in the alchemy of brewing."

If this unique brewery isn't compelling enough to get you to Portsmouth (pronounced "PORTS-smith") -- and it really should be -- then check back soon for an accompanying blog post on the exciting, vibrant craft beer scene on N.H.'s rugged, beautiful seacoast.

In The Brewery

A&G Homebrew Supply Shop

Friday, March 23, 2012

Smuttynose and the Portsmouth Brewery

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

If you don't want to download the podcast, you can STREAM IT HERE.

On December 29, 2011 we visited JT, the Minister of Propaganda for Smuttynose Brewing and the Portsmouth Brewery, and Tod Mott, the head brewer of the Portsmouth Brewery in Portsmouth, N.H. Thanks to a too-full minidisc, the informative and interesting interview that we did with Tod did not properly record. We'll need to meet up with Tod again, and this time have a blank disc on hand.

J.T., B.R., T.M. and B.W., in the Jimmy LaPanza
lounge of the P.B.

Though the interview with JT thankfully took, and he told us about both the 7-barrel brewpub in downtown Portsmouth and the 50-barrel brewery on the outskirts of town. The brewpub was founded in 1991, four years after the Northampton Brewery in central Mass. -- both started by siblings Peter and Janet Egelston.

At one point they split the business and Janet took control of the Northampton Brewery, the oldest brewpub in New England, and Peter got the Portsmouth Brewery. Being from N.H. I can tell you first hand that the pub was an immediate rage -- and for good reason, too. It wasn't just a novelty as the first modern brewpub in this food-centric New England port town, but it was a very impressive brewery, offering extremely well made beers and very interesting atypical styles.

A few years after the Portsmouth Brewery was underway, another local beer business, the Frank Jones Brewery, was started by a descendant of one of the most successful and wealthy entrepreneurs of the 1800s, Frank Jones, who in the late 1800s was one of the largest producers of beer in America. Unfortunately, the gene for business acumen didn't make it down the line, and the enterprise was soon bankrupt and its assets sold at auction.

As the story goes, Peter went to the auction just to "check it out", but came away with a new business -- the Smuttynose Brewery.

In this week's podcast you'll hear the details about the history of both breweries, their relationship to one another, and also the exciting new plans for a new Smuttynose brewery to be located on a farm in Hampton, New Hampshire!