Almost without exception, breweries don’t start big. In most cases the men and women creating these companies are not rich, and aren’t getting into the business to become so. The dream, then, is to arrive at a scale where achieving a type of financial success doesn’t forsake hands-on guidance of the product and values of the brand. After all, brewers want to brew, not sit in board meetings.
Jake Austin and Will Fisher started Austin Street Brewery in April of 2014 at One Industrial Way on Portland’s outskirts, the familiar progression of a homebrewing operation to commercial scale. Sharing a building with Bissell, Foundation and later Battery Steele, and with Allagash across the street, Austin Street quickly got noticed. Their hoppier stuff, like Patina Pale and Florens IPA, are distributed around Maine, but it was Austin’s technique surrounding Brett beers and mixed fermentations that set them apart early on. Beers like Grist Mill, Lawnmower, and Moses were nuanced and lightly tart without being bracingly sour, expressing the potential for subtlety achieved through the use of non-traditional yeast for primary and secondary fermentation. Eventually the brewery scaled up to a 10-barrel brewhouse and brought in more staff to increase production and distribution. This freed up Jake to help Will with more of the nuts and bolts on the brand side, but it also pulled him away from brewing.
