Building and Broadening - How We're Expanding Our Production at Mast Landing
As we round the corner on 6 years of pouring beers at the Mast Landing tasting rooms, there’s a lot of excitement happening behind the scenes. Most of you, our loyal supporters, encounter our beer at the final stage: when it’s ready to be enjoyed from a tap or can. In the meantime, we get the joy of watching each release move from idea to concept to execution. With a few big projects underway on the expansion side of things, we wanted to share a vision into the world of brewing and packaging beer at Mast Landing circa Spring 2022.
In Westbrook, our brewery team has been hard at work since we moved into our expanded production facility in 2019 - we’ve expanded our portfolio to include lagers, a wider variety of barrel aged beers, and traditional styles of ale, while also refining our core recipes to ensure the ultimate level of consistency & quality. When we first broke ground at 600 Saco St. the goal was to grow with patience, and to fill the new space with brewing equipment in a sustainable, efficient way. Over time, that has included adding new packaging machinery, slowly installing more fermentation vessels, and finetuning our use of our storage space.
The newest journey for this space is a series of horizontal fermentation vessels that are designed specifically for the production of lagers. Lager yeast ferments more slowly, and at a colder temperature than ale yeast, and these tanks create an optimal environment for lager yeast to function. The result for our production team is a more effective process to produce exceptional lager beer. Clarity in the beer is easier to achieve in these vessels, and the shape of the tank creates a lower stress environment for the delicate yeast cells to exist. Rest assured, we’re overjoyed with the results that we have achieved brewing lagers in our traditional conical shaped tanks over the past two years - you can expect the same level of quality and character that you’ve tasted in beers like Sunspotting, Cold Space, and of course, Champ Lager. The difference these new tanks make will all be in the process steps that our production team takes, and the result for you will be more innovation, increasingly consistent releases of crisp refreshing lagers, and a broader focus for the styles you might find waiting for you on any given day.
The first two tanks have their inaugural batches of beer in them now, while two more are on the way to being installed and brewed into.
Up at our Freeport location, there’s plenty afoot on the brewing side as well. If you’ve visited us at the tasting room since we opened last summer, you’ve likely seen the window enclosed space to the left of the front door just waiting to house a small pilot brewing system. Well, it will wait no longer, as March brought the arrival of our 5bbl brewhouse and fermentation vessels.
The future of this brewing space is perhaps one of the most exciting landmarks on the horizon for MLBC. While the majority of our beer will continue to be brewed in Westbrook, our Freeport pilot brewery will be the home of small-batch innovation. Beers brewed in Freeport will be limited to draft-only, and the majority will be available exclusively on tap our tasting rooms. The goal is to create a vibrant and bold culture of innovation that includes folks from across the company’s many departments. We expect recipe ideas and inspiration to come from brewers, tasting room staff, sales team members, and office staff alike, as we push the limits of our potential in a creative environment. By getting these small batches of beer straight to the draft lines on the other side of the windows, we’ll be able to get great feedback on which of our craziest ideas you all love. From there, some ideas will get tweaked and scaled up for production on a larger scale in Westbrook! We see it as the perfect way to keep the options exciting and new for you, while keeping the process fun & engaging for us.
As we continue along the path to completing these projects, you’ll find behind the scenes look on our social media accounts. Keep your eyes peeled and thanks for continuing to enjoy the latest endeavors from our production spaces!