Our third and final stop was Gloucester Brewing Company on Main Street. Housed in a brick building built in 1938, it was previously a small gas engine repair shop for Southern States. Originally the Yorktown Ice and Storage Corporation, it was a country store where you could get anything from ice to building supplies.
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Laura Brewer, owner and voice of reason poses with Mike Brewer, owner and wild card, with their favorite pints.
Gloucester Brewing Co. (GBC) owner Mike Brewer fell in love with the building when he would drive by after the repair shop closed. “It just looked like a brewery to me,” he said. “It’s beautiful inside and out.”
Brewer got his start in the beer business as a beer fan who wanted to open a microbrewery. He didn’t know how to brew beer but contacted his friend and brewer, Myron Ware. They brewed in Brewer’s garage for two years to develop recipes.
Consistency is the key, he said. “It’s easy to make beer,” he said. “It’s hardest to make good beer consistently.”
Brewer’s son, Michael Brewer, is the brewer now. “He produces some high-quality, consistent beer,” Brewer said. “He’s very conscientious about brewing, and I feel we are very consistent.”
GBC has 12 beers on tap and a hard seltzer for which you choose the flavor. The lineup includes ales, stouts and pale ales, and we again went with two flights of beers. Or was it three? Four?
Either way, Mac Cartier was impressed with the Better Than Roses Stout, a chocolate cherry stout. “It’s pretty well balanced,” he said. “Roasty and dark chocolate, has some sweetness without being sticky and has cherry without being cough syrup.”
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He also liked the Shucking Good (Local Oysters) Stout. “It’s really good,” he said. “Really creamy. This place has good stouts.”
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After seven years in business, Brewer said that you don’t have to worry about customers when you’re new. Now people have choices.
Michael Brewer, Mike Brewer's son, is the head brewer at Gloucester Brewing Company.
“We’ve had to figure out ways to entice or keep people at the brewery,” he said. He added food trucks and live music and noticed an industry trend toward changing tastes. Beer drinkers want “different flavor profiles, and they’re not drinking as many alcoholic beverages,” he said.
The non-alcoholic beers they offer from Athletic Brewing Co. sell well, as do a hard seltzer to which you can add different fruit purees. They also have fruity, alcoholic slushies such as peach mimosa and strawberry banana. “The slushies are a little bit different,” Brewer said. “They appease a lot of people who are not necessarily looking for a beer flavor.”
The industry is changing, and there’s a generation coming up that isn’t as interested in drinking beer but may be into mocktails, Brewer said. The challenge will be to entice them to come hang out at a brewery by offering something for everyone.
“We have a strong, loyal customer base,” he said. “I think it’s pretty solid. I don’t want to be stagnant. I want to continually try to evolve to a place that everyone wants to come to, and they find something to drink that’s non-alcoholic or not.”
Like other breweries, he’s dipping his toe into distribution by working with local restaurants. “We want to get our beer out there so people who haven’t yet made the trip 'all the way' to Gloucester can experience what we offer and then maybe actually take a trip to visit,” he said.
Gloucester Brewing Company | 6778 Main Street, Gloucester | globrewco.com
