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!

At the Portsmouth Brewery.

 

The Smutty bottling line from afar.
Smutty barrel aged beers.
	I can't hear you -- can you make it LAUTER?!
	These tanks held the 2011-12 Winter Ale.
Hey beer nerds -- my eyes are up HERE!
Pat F.'s motorcycle gang has a long reach.
	This bridge is history.