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One of my favorite parts about covering the Boston beer scene has been witnessing breweries in all walks of life. You’ve got your grandfatherly types like Harpoon and Sam Adams that have been around since craft became, well, a craft. And you’ve got your youngsters like Trillium and Newburyport Brewing Co, who are still learning to crawl. It’s fascinating to watch a brewery grow up, and Waltham-based Portico Brewing Co. is well on its way to walking.
At this point, the “three guys meet in a Boston grad school” story is routine, but there are a few neat variations on the theme here. Besides attending Babson, Alex Rabe studied under an architect in New York, Alex Zielke studied brewing at an institute in Germany, and Ian Chester claimed the title of Director of Sales and Channel Development (while keeping his suit-and-tie day job). Blend entrepreneurial smarts, chemical know-how, and a passion for design -and voila, you have Portico.
Aaron Mateychuk of Watch City Brewing showed interest in the partnership early on, offering shared space and sage advice. Porter’s Tavern in the Square became the trio’s first bar account, featuring Fuzzy Logic, a play on the German Kölsch style that Alex R. deems “a gateway beer for Bud drinkers.” Portico also produces a Scottish ale, a Sour, and a Saison, and exactly one year in, they’ve just released their fifth commercial brew – Chroma, a delicious dry-hopped Amber brewed with rye. They have their sights set on going glass with the addition of a bottling machine (licensing and label approval pending) and have recently signed a new account at Cambridge’s Brick and Mortar.
However, as with any craft beer operation, life is not always sunshine and rainbows. Small staff numbers mean high amounts of physical labor, and the Portico boys do everything from marketing to getting the beer in the glass, opting to make their own tap handles and do their own distributing. Babysitting your brews can be hard work, and as I can attest to from chatting with all three brewers for an evening, there’s bound to be some exhaustion. But at the end of the day, they know their hard work is all out of love for the craft.
Right now, Alex Z. is working to duplicate Rendition, the Sour that was first released last summer. He admits to being surprised that making the same beer over and over is so difficult; balancing bacteria is no easy task (hats off to Budweiser, I suppose). The trio has also been taken aback by how hard it is to keep up with accounts due to the “what’s new, what’s next” mentality craft beer fans tend to have. But the rotating tap phenomenon cuts both ways – I suspect that Portico will find itself a slew of new fans when they attend the American Craft Beer Festival the first weekend of June. Count me among them.
