Finally all of our artist prayers have been answered! BEER is coming to town. FPAC caught up with the folks (Jean-Claude & Esther Tetreault) from new Fort Point brewery, Trillium. Jean-Claude shares the secrets of his craft below and why Fort Point will be Trillium's new home.
FPAC: How did you
decide on the name Trillium?
JC: I'm a bit of a
botany nerd, in addition to being a beer geek, so I’ve actually loved the
trillium flower for quite some time. The flower, an American woodland
wildflower, symbolizes what we are trying to achieve in our beers. Ephemeral
beauty, balance, and a sense of place.
“These beers are what we
envision might have been made today, if a centuries old beer culture had
naturally evolved in New England.”
Of course, its not yet possible to
source all of our ingredients from a local source, we do this as much as
possible. We feel that using ingredients that are characteristically and
naturally American, grown, harvested and gathered as close to the brewery as
possible, we can really embody the 'farmhouse' notion that we are striving to
achieve, which can be a little tricky in an urban setting such as Fort Point.
So, until we can build a brewery on some farmland ourselves, that means working
with companies like Valley Malt, Buckle Farm,
Four
Star Farms to source local grain, malt,
fruit and spices...and we're even growing some of our
own hops on my uncle's farm. We're sourcing neutral wine barrels from places
like Saltwater
Farm Vineyard (where Esther and I were married) and Jonathan
Edwards to age some of our 'wild' fermented farmhouse beers. We're
really excited for the first lot of spent spirit barrels to come available from
Bully
Boy and Grand
Ten, two new Boston distilleries. We're even working on culturing and nurturing fermentation
microbes natural in the air around us to develop a truly unique and local beer
FPAC: What made you
decide to move to Fort Point?
JC: Finding
relatively affordable, small scale, light industrial space in greater Boston is
really tricky. We're competing with Biotech/Pharma and other companies that
command a very high price per square foot, which originally didn't have us
considering any Boston zip codes. We were initially looking in places where
some other breweries have recently cropped up (ie. Chelsea, Everett), but when
a lease fell through at the last second at a location in Everett, a colleague
of our real estate agent knew of a spot worth exploring on Congress street in
Fort Point that met some of the criteria we had laid out. The space was in
pretty rough shape, but had some solid bones. The seemingly endless opportunity
of Fort Point was sort of a 'no duh' part of the decision. My good friend/designer and
I looked at the place, squinted really hard, and developed a vision for what
was possible. We knew we were in for the long haul with the zoning
variance process, so we had time to roll up our sleeves to clean out the years
of rust, dust and debris. Just looking around, we knew were were in a very
special place, and will hopefully be part of the continued revival of this little
part of Fort Point. The immediate rush of support from Friends of Fort Point,
FPAC, Greentown Labs, and countless residents and businesses has energized us
through this very arduous process of building a brewery. The welcoming
experience has been pretty unbelievable, considering it happened before folks
even had a chance to try our beers!
FPAC: Will the new
brewery be doing public tours?
JC: Due to the small
footprint of the space and the inherent space, cost and liability limitations
that would be needed to allow the public in to a manufacturing/production floor;
we won't be able to do a true walk-through type of tour. We will, however, have
an attached retail space that will have a partition wall framed with reclaimed
windows (from the demolition of 319A street) that will allow visitors a vantage
point to see the production floor, the brewhouse, fermentation vessels and
wooden barrels (and maybe a busy brewer or two!).
FPAC: Brewing is an
art craft all its own. What is the process? (For those of us who
are not up on our Hops and fermenting)
FPAC: How many beers does Trillium currently produce
and what is your favorite?
JC: Oh, we have
dozens and dozens of recipes that we have already brewed. There are probably
hundreds more that are swirling around our heads, but haven't made it to the
kettle yet. We plan to focus a good percentage of our production on 4 core
brands, but will also have a steady stream of small batch releases...there are
just too many different kind of beer we want to make to limit ourselves. If
you follow our facebook and twitter
account, you'll see hints of what beers we have in store as we tweak
and improve recipes on our pilot brewery.
FPAC: With the craft beer craze that is sweeping New
England, how does Trillium hope to stand out from the rest?
JC: We couldn't be
more excited about the incredible rebirth of brewing and beer culture in
Boston, New England and all across the country. Craft brewing is an
increasingly crowded but still a relatively small segment of the overall market.
Ultimately, we strive to make beers that are truly memorable and world-class.
We hope to reach a balance in them that appeal not only to the hardened beer
geeks, but also to folks with a burgeoning appreciation for better beers
FPAC: On your site you talk about the local artisans
who help collaborate with Trillium to help enhance your craft. Any future plans
for Trillium to team up with some local artists?
JC: Absolutely. Gabrielle
Schaffner and I have had a few exchanges where we discussed all the different
collaboration/inspiration opportunities there could be. We're excited about the
possibilities here, so stay tuned via FPAC for more on these opportunities in
the coming months.
FPAC: When is the expected move in date?
JC: Oh, we've been
banging away at our 369 Congress Street location since January 2011. Most of
that time has been spent waiting for community hearings, the zoning variance
hearing/approval and the building permit, which we finally received in February
2012. If you've walked by recently, you'll continue to see some big changes to
the exterior; there's an equally dramatic change going on in the interior as
well. There are loads of things that can (will) go wrong, but we're really
hoping to brew our first batch of commercial beer toward late summer/early fall
of this year.
Log onto http://www.trilliumbrewing.com/ to learn more!
Log onto http://www.trilliumbrewing.com/ to learn more!
* All Photos courtesy of Trillium Brewery
