Berkshire Business Journal Brewing Berkshires’ beer

New local establishments will enhance an already thriving brewery scene

By L iam G orman

Craft beer lovers, rejoice! 2023 is turning into the year of the brewery in the Berkshires.

Heralded by the long awaited opening of Hot Plate Brewing Company in Pittsfield this winter, the craft beer business is buzzing throughout the county. In mid-May, Lenox will get on the map with its own entry when Antimony Brewing opens its doors. And let’s not leave out North Adams where Rising Glass Brewing Company is aiming to pour its first pint by late summer.

Joining established notables Big Elm, Barrington Brewery, Wandering Star, Shire Beer and Bright Ideas, these new additions will make the Berkshires home to a total of eight breweries, creating an informal beer trail from one end of the county to the other. They add a boost to local economies and a new reason for beer lovers to belly up to the bar in the Berkshires.

For the owners of Hot Plate, locating in the Berkshires turned out to be a no-brainer. But they needed to do their homework first before following their draft dreams.

“We started looking at census data for different counties throughout Massachusetts, and we found that there was a really good alignment between the craft beer consumer and Berkshire County,” recalls Brooklyn transplant and co-founder of Hot Plate, Mike Dell’Aquilla. “Then we looked at the competitive landscape. And we thought there’s more than a good chance that Berkshire County is underserved from a craft beer perspective.”

For Sarah Real, Dell’Aquilla’s partner at Hot Plate and in life (the two were married in 2007) it was all about the data. After all, when she’s not brewing, she handles “consumer insights” for Paramount. “My job is really to dig into who our consumers are, helping advertisers nail down where they want to advertise”, she said.

So when it came to their business, Real dug deep into who craft beer customers in the Berkshires might be by asking all the right questions, who is a craft beer drinker?

What does that mean?

What activities do they do?

“So really just building the kind of a person I thought was in the Berkshires as a craft brewing consumer and having that confirmed or not,” she said.

The data panned out. According to the profile that Real built, visitors to the Berkshires make for ideal customers. “With a median age of 52 years old, these married, college-educated professionals coming from NYC, Boston, or other parts of New England often travel as a couple and with an annual income of $100,200 they also have the resources to spend money on luxury items like craft beer,” her profile stated.

“As that data shows, these are affluent consumers” said Dell’Aquilla. By leaning into the Berkshires as a craft beer destination, he feels the hospitality industry as a whole will benefit.

“There is the halo effect that it will benefit the brewers, but it will benefit all of the hospitality businesses up and down Berkshire County” he said.

“I think all of New England has really stepped it up”, said Bill Heaton, who runs Big Elm Brewing in Sheffield with his wife, Christine Bump. “People go to Maine, they go to Vermont, Massachusetts just for breweries. It’s crazy. You know, it would have never happened 10 years ago.”