B REW RE V IE W
Gritty’s City First thought, best thought. BY P E TE LYO NS & JASO N SIN G ER
FROM TOP: MEAGHAN MAURICE BAILEY, PETE LYONS
M
aine’s love affair with local beer is relatively recent: The Simpsons is older than the state’s first brewpub. It wasn’t until 1988, fifty-five years after Prohibition ended, that Gritty McDuff’s opened on Portland’s Fore Street as Maine’s second brewery and first brewpub. “We were only the thirty-third licensed brewery in America,” says Ed Stebbins, co-founder of Gritty’s. “People told us that beer came from Milwaukee in a can. They were like, ‘Come on, boys. What are you trying to do?’” FROM INCOMER TO INSTITUTION Yet on a Thursday night more than three decades later, locals gather to drink beer and play cribbage, watch basketball with friends, talk politics, and eat bangers and mash. How does a brewery featuring Eng-
lish-style ales and pub grub remain relevant in today’s world of hazy IPAs and trendy, infused this-and-that? By happily avoiding those trends. The cribbage players have been meeting in front of Gritty’s mural depicting frolicking, naked brewers for more than twenty years. (In the brewery downstairs we observed neither nudity nor frolicking, sadly.) Gritty’s fits like a comfy tweed jacket. The beer is comfortable, the setting is comfortable, and the food leans toward comfort as well. There are two floors, multiple bars
Gritty’s fits like a comfy tweed jacket.
to order from and lean on, and big tables to accommodate pints and poutine. It’s a great space to catch up with friends new and old, and for those of us who have been in Portland a couple decades, it feels like an old friend. The big windows upstairs look out over Wharf Street, Commercial Street, and the Port of Portland. BE BRITISH, BREW BRITISH The beers reflect Stebbins’s youth: he grew up in England and was raised on the Firkin Brewery chain of pubs then scattered throughout the United Kingdom. He and his business partner, Richard Pfeffer, valM AY 2 0 2 2 6 3
