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 Ever since our first sip of Inkwell Stout, we here at DrinkCraftBeer.com have been big fans of Matthew Steinberg's work. When we heard that he was leaving Offshore Ale Company and their brewpub on Martha's Vineyard to start a new craft brewery in Plymouth, MA, we were psyched. No longer would we have to travel via ferry to drink his beer (Offshore was a brewpub that only had 2 bottled offerings. To get his specialty beers, you had to take a ferry for almost an hour to get to the island of Martha's Vineyard off of Cape Cod). On top of the geographic change, Mayflower Brewing Company is the first new production brewery to open in Massachusetts for a while now, so we wanted to make sure we were there to see the beginning. When news first broke, we called Matt and said we wanted to be there as soon as possible to document the opening and sit down to talk with him. Well, they finally laid the last drain, got the brewhouse set up and fired up their brand new kettle on January 4th. On the 16th, DrinkCraftBeer.com was at Mayflower to check out their beautiful new brewery and talk to Matt Steinberg about his newest project. Oh, we got to try a small sample of Pale Ale as well. Let's just say we're psyched for this new brewery! Now, on to the beer talk.
 DCB: So how did Mayflower come about?
Matt: Drew (Owner) is a descendant of the Mayflower. His family member was John Alden who was the cooper (barrelmaker) on the Mayflower. He was hired to be on the Mayflower so he could make barrels to bring back because they needed to leave some barrels that had beer behind. When the boat came back there were cooperage laws that when you leave with cooperage you had to bring the cooperage back with you. You had to build the cooperage on the boat. So that's part of that story.
 DCB: Haha, so even back then losing kegs was a big problem, I guess!
Matt: So that was part of the labels, using the barrels for the pale ale as the flagship, not that it's barrel aged beer but I don't think most people will expect it to be barrel aged. Then the farmhouse picture for the mellow golden ale and the hops for the IPA. But the porter we decided to go with the three threads story, which is strong ale, dark beer, and lager blended together to make a more drinkable beer for the porters and whoever else were working. So we were thinking, what can the icon look like? Drew found this rope image with three ropes for a boat and I was like, "That is awesome!" So we had our graphic designer draw our own version of that. The color is really cool; you can see on the six packs it sort of has a wood grain. The porter has this charcoal black gray look. I'm real happy with it. Looking at all these images on the computer was very difficult looking at it on the monitor. But then when they six packs came in I was like, "Yeah this is sweet."
DCB: Is brewing in the English style different for you?
Matt: I love the classic part of it. Being at Offshore with the two flagship beers it was one thing. A lot of people really don't understand, but I do love the classic styles. I kind of got over the need to brew a different beer every batch. I loved that for 4 1/2 years but, finally, I was like it's time to buckle down and brew some beer. We brewed the draft beer for the last year I was there and it was really a challenge on that system to brew consistently.
 DCB: While you were at Offshore you could really do whatever you wanted to brew, can we still expect some special brews from you here?
Matt: Yeah, we're definitely going to do some. I did design all these beers, so I take any credit or criticism in that sense on these beers. Ryan and I are going to do our best to brew a couple of seasonals that come out every year. We're thinking about doing a Thanksgiving ale which I think makes perfect sense. The one problem I see with that is the release date. All the Oktoberfests are already on the shelf and, as those are coming off, winter beers are going in. Our Thanksgiving beer would be going in say October first and go until New Years. But does it seem like it's old on New Years if you're drinking Thanksgiving ale? So we need to figure that out. We don't want to brew an Oktoberfest because we're an English style brewery. The Thanksgiving ale is probably going to be something like and old ale. We briefly talked about doing a barley wine. I don't love barley wines for personal consumption; they are certainly a fun beer to make because you see how crazy people go. I love Cambridge Brewing company's spring [barley wine] Arquebus that Will [Meyers, CBC head brewer] makes. It's a spring barley wine and it's dry and strong. I don't know how Will makes it so dry but man it's amazing. So that is certainly an option for a spring beer. We've talked about doing some type of wheat beer for the summer. I'll be itching to do some kind of imperial stout. I've got a whole new idea for an imperial that I'll just have to be careful not to call Inkwell (Matt's IRS from Offshore) out of habit.
As proud as I was of that beer [Inkwell] every time I brewed it, it was never the same and it was improvisational stout in title. I am excited to do some new stuff. The IPA here is nothing like any of the IPAs I brewed before... it's 70 IBUS and 6.8-7.2% and it's going to be big and bitter, high aroma, dry hopped. But it will be drinking beer...for freaks. [laughs]
DCB: Will you be doing some cask ales?
Matt: Yeah we will be, I own two firkins personally.
Ryan: [laughs] Yeah probably tomorrow we'll have one filled.
Matt: Shoot yeah we could probably do it tomorrow. We don't have an engine yet, but the idea was to have an engine here (indicating a spot on the tasting room bar top). But this [tasting room] wasn't designed to be a bar here, but we'd need to get a breather and make sure we open it on a day we can get 20 people here, but that shouldn't be a problem.
DCB: [Speaking of places with casks,] if you can get into Deep Ellum that'd be great...since we can walk there.
Matt: Yeah we'll definitely be in there. Aaron does a great job there. Sunset already placed an order as well.
DCB: Were you guys worried about entering the Massachusetts market since there's so much beer here?
Matt: I have to say I don't necessarily think that the saturation is true. One of the issues with the market here in Massachusetts is that the distributors bring in so many beers so it is saturated but it's not saturated by breweries that are local. It's very easy to say, "I drink the local beer;" if you live in Boston it's Harpoon, if you live out west it's Berkshire, but there's nothing down here. And Drew, when he was planning this brewery he had several ideas. He had this dog oriented idea, but that's kind of been played out a little bit. And the Mayflower idea, but he would only do that if it was built in Plymouth. He had to build a facility where it belongs. He had a really hard time finding a location until he found this place which is a great location for a brewery. We're not going to get any walk by traffic. It's not super easy to find, but it's not that hard.
We already have so many locals, the construction guys already want beer, the electricians want beer and it's unbelievable how much business Colony Place is doing. So yes the market is saturated with great beer, but there's room for more. The Publick House has great Belgians and tons of stuff from California, but they have no beer from MA on tap beside a couple specialties and some one offs.
DCB: How big are you guys looking to do production wise?
Matt: Right now we plan on doing 1000 barrels. We have the hops to do up to 1200 this year.
DCB: Where are you looking to distribute?
We're looking to be a small regional brewery in the 10-15K barrel range eventually.
 DCB: Will you be doing any bombers?
Matt: We'll be doing 6 packs for now but our bottling machine can be easily adjusted so we'll probably do some special releases in bombers. The IPA will be draft only at least to start, so that may be something that goes into a bomber at some point. We found this really interesting package for bombers that's a 4-pack that you can either do stickers or print on. That would probably be more like a mix pack of bombers, so I love that idea.
We've talked about doing 12 packs, like a mix pack, Christmas time mix packs do really well. DCB: So the big questions: When does it hit stores and when can people taste it?
Matt: Well Ryan and I have been tasting it but we're lucky. Draft beer will probably be released late next week or early the following week (January 24/25 or the following week). The accounts that will see it first will be: British Beer Company, Stone Forge Tavern, T-Bones in Plymouth, The Colonial, Sam Diegos and a few others. Cambridge Commons pre-orderd, Union Brewhouse has pre-ordered a few kegs.
Bottles will be some time mid to late February. But I do foresee bottles coming out pretty quick. The tasting room will be open when we say it's open [laughs]. DCB Note: For anyone worried that Matt's beers won't offer up the same quality as his past work, let's just say you have little to worry about. While he may be brewing in the English style, our sample of the Pale Ale was distinctly American in flavor. Not to say there's anything wrong with English beers, but our sample of the pale had nice malt tones with a great up front hop flavor followed by a distinct bitterness. We're excited to try the whole line-up and you'll soon find us scouting out South Shore bars to try them all on tap.
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