As the sun set on the summer of 2012, I plotted a trip from my home in eastern Massachusetts to visit my alma mater, Springfield College, for some function or other. My wife, the research assistant and activity-seeker in our relationship, found a brewery to visit on the way out west. The draw for this particular brewery was a tweet that mentioned something about pistachios—not as an adjunct in a Stout, but just as a snack.
We pulled into what was the driveway of a residential home. The small red barn, located on the left side of the property, had flung open its doors. Two women sat on the stone patio enjoying a flight of three samples. No one else was there. My wife and I walked into Tree House Brewing Company in Brimfield, Massachusetts for the first time. Three beers (an IPA, Julius; a Milk Stout, That’s What She Said; an English Style Bitter, Old Man) were on tap. We talked to the staff and owners. We drank the beer. We ordered growlers and promised we’d be back. In our hour-long visit, my wife and I were 50% of the customers in attendance.
Almost a decade later to the day, I’m sitting in a possibly-too-deep Adirondack chair, sipping a Smoked Lager at one of Tree House’s four locations. This one is a sprawling campus in Deerfield that overlooks the western Massachusetts landscape, midway through its slow slide into the auburn colors of fall. It less resembles a family home than a college dining hall mixed with the kind of barn used to host destination rustic weddings. There are now 74 beer options from which to choose, which doesn’t include a line of hard seltzers, plus spirits, coffee, and non-alcoholic beverages. In lieu of pistachios, pizzas are now baked on site.
Change has come quickly to this Massachusetts brewery. But along the northern ridge of the Bay State, it doesn’t always move so fast. Head against the grain on Route 2—a west-to-east road that begins in Petersburgh, New York, on the state’s easternmost ledge, and concludes near the Boston Common—and find that urban density soon gives way to winding roads and, eventually, the Berkshire Mountains.
Out here, there are towns that sound exotic (Florida and Peru) and neighboring towns that sound like international airports (Heath, which abuts Rowe). There are towns that share their names with former Red Sox pitchers (Becket) and Presidents (Monroe, Washington, Adams); there’s a Williamsburg and a Williamstown. As the leaves turn, there is no prettier drive in the northeastern United States.
But Route 2 remains the less popular route, most drivers opting for Route 90—the Massachusetts Turnpike—which runs all the way to Chicago. This quietude is mirrored in the breweries that run alongside this road less-taken.
Across New England, there are certain metropolitan beer destinations. There are brewery bus tours in Boston; Portland, Maine; Burlington, Vermont. But for me, most of the appeal is found on the backroads.
Honest Weight Artisan Ales in Orange, Massachusetts was founded in October 2015 by co-owners Sean Nolan and Jay Sullivan, two veterans of the Boston stalwart Cambridge Brewing Company. Nolan grew up in nearby Athol, and the pair found themselves drawn to this region on camping and hiking trips. Their goal was to replicate the pace of the place with their beers, with a stylistic nod to the European breweries centered around community.
“We’re really passionate about Belgian Farmhouse Ales, so Grisettes, Saisons, Bières de Garde,” says Nolan. “Generally, we’ve done both clean and mixed-fermentation beers. We’re hugely inspired to brew those beers. It was on the first page of the business plan. Something from that zone will always be represented on our taplist.”
The name Honest Weight denotes an integrity of service. You’re getting what you asked for; nothing less, nothing more. There’s no thumb on the scale.
“We were trying to return to the ideas that started the brewery. I was in love with De La Senne and De Dolle. Little places with a community vibe, where the beer isn’t the main focus. They’re more of community centers. That’s what this place is and will hopefully continue to be.”
“We like dry, hoppy beers,” says Nolan. “We don’t do wacky marshmallows in the Stouts or chocolate cookies in the Stouts or use these weird hop byproducts people are using now. We’re a little grossed out by that. We just make beer with beer ingredients.”
Today, Honest Weight is still reeling a bit from the decline in sales and loss of drink-in visitors it experienced during the heights of the pandemic. But that inflection point has also led to a renewal of the founders’ original focus. “[We] came back from [the] COVID [break] trying to figure out what’s next,” says Sullivan. “We were trying to return to the ideas that started the brewery. I was in love with De La Senne and De Dolle. Little places with a community vibe, where the beer isn’t the main focus. They’re more of community centers. That’s what this place is and will hopefully continue to be.”
In January, though, the brewery—and, more specifically, Sullivan—encountered a serious setback. “I started to have some health issues and went to the doctor and some scans later, I found out I had cancer,” he says.
The 43-year old was diagnosed with colon cancer. Though it is undoubtedly frightening—the disease runs in his family—Sullivan remains steadfast in his optimism. He is set to undergo just another couple rounds of chemotherapy treatments. “Hopefully after that, I’ll be given a clean bill of health and we can continue getting back to all the things we wanted to do [before the diagnosis],” he says.
That unexpected encounter with illness has only cemented the brewery’s values. It is a place of community. Family members help in the tasting room. Neighbors lend their forklifts. Friends come to enjoy a place where beer is the companion to a good time, not the focus.
[Author’s note: On the same day this story was published, Honest Weight Artisan Ales posted to its official social media accounts that Sullivan is officially cancer-free.]
“One of the things that happens in tasting rooms or at beer fests is that someone will take a sip and say something like, ‘It didn’t blow my mind.’ What the fuck are you talking about? It’s a beer. It’s not like standing in front of the pyramids. That should blow your mind. Today was my daughter’s first day of fourth grade. She’s going to be 10 this year. That blows my mind.”
Before the turn over the Gill-Montague Bridge that runs high over a drought-dried Connecticut River, photographer Angela Rosario points to our left and says, “Food truck! I love food trucks!”
Cielito Lindo, it seems, is calling us for lunch. Into the dusty parking lot we pull. Before long we have carnitas with salsa verde (“That’s what’s up,” Rosario says through a mouthful of taco) and pollo smothered under a bed of lettuce, cotija cheese, and salsa roja (“Frying makes everything better,” my friend notes accurately).
If change is visible here, it’s that I can sit at a picnic table outside, steps from both a beautiful river view to the south and speeding cars to the north, in a town of just more than 8,000 people, and devour street tacos.
Cielito Lindo translates to “beautiful little sky,” and it is also the name of a wildly popular Mexican song played mostly by mariachi bands, but which has also been performed by Luciano Pavarotti, the boy band Menudo, and Ana Gabriel. The food truck has been a mainstay on what is known as the French King Highway since 2021, its mustard-yellow facade, white and purple signage, and small board filled with daily specials.
There is a small luxury in stopping spontaneously at some roadside food truck, simply because we have the ability to do so, and that time today is on our side. This simple act of slowing down, which is encouraged by Route 2’s pace. As we finish our shared dishes, we both agree an ice-cold beer would have been the perfect pairing. Luckily, it isn’t long before we can resolve that problem.
In the 2006 Pixar movie “Cars,” Sally, a Porsche, laments how the construction of a major interstate changed driving along Route 66 through the fictional town of Radiator Springs. “[Route 66] didn’t cut through the land like that interstate,” she said. “It moved with the land. It rose, it fell, it curved. Cars didn’t drive on it to make great time. They drove on it to have a great time.”
Up until the Massachusetts Turnpike was built in 1957, with an extension into Boston completed in 1965, the way west was Route 2. Compared to its 65mph alternative, Route 2 is less concerned with speed. It winds alongside rivers, hugs turns tightly, and follows the landscape’s organic form. The road runs parallel to Miller’s River, which feeds into the Connecticut River. On a natural bend of water sits Turner’s Falls: one of five villages that make up the town of Montague, and the home of Brick and Feather Brewery.
Lawrence George, who doubles as Brick and Feather’s co-owner and head brewer, hadn’t initially planned on running his outfit in this rural location. He’d previously brewed at Russian River Brewing Company in California, Berkshire Brewing Company in Western Massachusetts, and Cambridge Brewing Company (where he only briefly overlapped with Nolan and Sullivan). But after spending some time drinking at Maine’s Oxbow Brewing Company, he saw how, despite the brewery’s remote setting, the place was still able to draw crowds. “The Oxbow experience was eye-opening,” he says. “Here was this brewery in the middle of the woods and people were showing up. My wife and I kind of did the, ‘Huh, maybe we should look into this.’”
“I have had customers that have been coming in here since day one because they were hop heads and now they’re walking out with a case of Pilsner. They tell me, ‘You got me hooked on this.’ That feels good.”
Despondent after one location slipped through his fingers, George “drove around the [Pioneer] Valley, crying and looking for ‘For Rent’ signs.” He made it to Turner’s Falls, saw the building on the banks of the Power Canal, and immediately sensed home.
George opened his brewery on the backbone of two styles—hoppy Pale Ales and Saisons—simply because that’s what he was making and consuming when the idea for the brewery first floated into his head in 2015. Saison production eventually fell by the wayside, and today George says Brick and Feather is proudest of its Lager program, which was born out of a love for the style but took flight as the world was forced to reassess during the pandemic’s fallout.
“Lagers were the biggest shift for me as a drinker,” says George. “As soon as we had enough tanks for Lagers, we went for it. After the pandemic we really focused on Lager production. We’re developing techniques around yeast management, we have developed recipes for a 10° Czech Pils and a 12° Plato Czech Pils. We still rotate in our classic IPA lineups, but also want to mix in Milds and Kölsch in as well.”
The taproom is a well-lit, open space with sharp contrasts of white on wood. Weekends are soundtracked by the conviviality of friends, families, and dogs. There’s been a satisfaction in watching those patrons follow in step with the brewery’s stylistic shifts, George says. “I have had customers that have been coming in here since day one because they were hop heads and now they’re walking out with a case of Pilsner. They tell me, ‘You got me hooked on this.’ That feels good.”
Many rural New England breweries double as community centers, places where campaign events are held for school board candidates and where drinkers are as likely to see their teachers as they are their accountants or plumbers. These are not just people who see one another at the same industry events, but at the same farmers markets, at the same school bus stops.
“[This became a community spot] on its own,” George says. “We were too in the weeds with starting a business and owning a brewery to think about what happens after we opened, but that sure happened. It was really cool. We had people coming in, business owners popping in to tell us they were so proud to have us as a brewery here.”
Tree House Brewing Company’s Deerfield location arises on the side of the road the way a theme park or national landmark presents itself. It’s expansive and impressive enough that Rosario, upon the sudden realization that this is our destination, exclaims, “Oh my God, is this it?”
Tree House is a source of fascination for me. From being one of only four people at the brewery on my first visit, I’ve seen that number increase with every subsequent trip. To stand here in Deerfield now, before acres of land and a truly mammoth building, feels like the opposite of cramming into a barn on a cold winter’s day before being handed back empty growlers because they ran out of beer.
Em Sauter, a cartoonist and the author and illustrator of “Hooray for Craft Beer,” sets up her Pints & Panels pop-ups at Tree House often. She appreciates the brewery for its attention to detail, she tells me—it’s a place that does not simply exist as “a haze factory,” and nails classic styles like the California Common Ale.
“The beer is really, really good,” she says. “They’ve become a huge destination. [They are] like a beer Disneyland.”
But what fascinates me more than Tree House’s sheer scale is its standing within the local beer industry. Today, it seems to exist not in the community, but of the community. At most breweries I visit—whether I’m there to drink a beer on site, take a couple packaged options to go, or to cover a story—I can chat with brewers or brewery owners. Moreover, most seem to know one another. Either they’ve worked alongside each other on a brew deck, or know someone who has, or are just familiar with their work. There’s a sense of shared experience. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Tree House. The brewery doesn’t do collaborations. It doesn’t do tap takeovers. Hell, it’s not even on tap anywhere.
“The beer is really, really good. They’ve become a huge destination. [They are] like a beer Disneyland.”
I don’t mean this critically; it’s just a quiet observation from someone on the periphery of the industry. It’s quite remarkable what Tree House has done for the industry, seemingly without being an active participant within the collective. The company is quick to showcase on its website, however, its involvement within the communities of which it is a part. It’s donated $500,000 in total to various initiatives, including environmental programs and regional causes, and, in Franklin County, where Deerfield is situated, even offered a COVID-19 vaccine clinic.
“It’s nice to see them reinvesting in what they have and having a lot of faith in what they do,” says Sauter. “It shows they care.”
Perhaps even more fascinating is that the sheen hasn’t dulled. In an industry where darling breweries twinkle and then fade, Tree House never seemed to suffer the slings and arrows of tired consumers. The demand endured and, impressively, for a brewery whose lottery ticket is hop-forward beer, it has since ventured into styles from Dunkels to Helles.
In 2021, Tree House opened two new locations outside its home base in Charlton, central Massachusetts. It now operates in Sandwich—the first town off the Sagamore Bridge, and the welcome to Cape Cod. Vacationers can pull off the road for a quick detour, then load up on beers for their trip. Deerfield, where I stand now, serves a different purpose. Also conveniently located off a major thoroughfare, it allows travelers heading north into Vermont (or south from Vermont) easy access to great beer.
In October, the brewery opened a fourth location in Tewksbury, at the old Tewksbury Country Club. Not only will this location north of Boston serve a new part of the state, it is also situated on the way to elsewhere—in this case, along the roads north to Maine and New Hampshire.
Today, I’m surprised to discover the Deerfield location is relatively quiet. The outside seating area is outlined by string lights, Adirondack chairs, and picnic tables. We take up two of the many empty chairs and plant ourselves facing north, a Blonde Ale (called Eureka) and a Smoked Lager occupying our glasses. The Steve Miller Band comes on the speakers at least twice during our visit.
On a day that I expect quietude from the first two stops, I would have never expected the silence would be loudest here. But it’s a fitting end to our journey. After we finish up, we head back on the road just as the sky turns dark.
Words by Matt OsgoodPhotos by Angela Rosario
