USA, MA: Slow Down Brewing Co. takes unorthodox path to new brewery

Earlier this month, people crowded around a bar for the opening of one of the newest breweries in Massachusetts, Slow Down Brewing Co., the Worcester Telegram reported on December 14.

The four friends who founded Slow Down tried, but failed to quell their nerves. More people were tasting their beer in one night than in the more than five years of homebrewing that led them here. Mostly positive reviews rolled in, though. And their debut beer, “Agent of Chaos,” an opaque IPA brewed with Simcoe and Bru-1 hops, sold out in two hours.

All in all, the night resembled a successful brewery opening in every way save for one: the brewery.

Unlike 99% of new breweries in the state, Slow Down has opened without a taproom or even what you would think of as a typical commercial brewery. The address on their farmer-brewer license leads you to the two-car garage attached to co-founder Bryan Wrenn’s Whitinsville home.

Instead, Slow Down hopes to gradually build buzz for its beer through draft sales at restaurants and bars around the state known for their epic tap lists, with the goal to find a taproom in Central Massachusetts somewhere down the line. For purely selfish reasons, I’ve strongly recommended Grafton, my hometown.

It is a risky approach to operating a brewery. Slow Down won’t have a reliable place to sell beer, test batches and introduce itself to new customers. Brewing out of a garage, no matter how big, it might also run into space restrictions as it scales up the brewhouse and nets more draft accounts.

But in a time where new breweries are thriving despite the seemingly never-ending global pandemic, I’m not counting Slow Down out. Its founders want to grow in an unorthodox way to be sure. However, they believe this path protects them from overextending themselves and skirts investors.

“My biggest thing, and these guys all agree, is we decided to go this route so we didn't owe anybody anything,” said co-founder Dave Curini. "We're all self-funded. We hope this path will lead to a self-funded taproom, rather than pulling in somebody who's not as passionate about the beer as us.”

We were sitting at Reunion Tap & Table, Slow Down’s first draft account, drinking, “Panoramic,” the second of the two IPAs from the brewery that the restaurant has had on tap. One could argue that owner Sargon Hanna, childhood friends with a few of Slow Down’s founders, put its beer on his board as a favor. Hanna squashed that notion, however, the minute he ordered another keg.

Curini grew up in Shrewsbury, while the other founders, Wrenn, Rich Linehan and Scott Lynch, are from Grafton. All in their 30s, they’re beer nerds to the highest degree, which means one or all of the following is true: They have traveled north several times solely to visit breweries, rated a beer on Untappd and frequented The Dive Bar in its heyday.

“When we were all hanging out, we all had the same passion for the same beers,” Linehan said. “We gravitated towards the juicy New England IPAs. We got to the point where, as we continued to homebrew and produce products that we thought were in line with some of the beer we got at restaurants or at breweries we visited, we began to raise the question, ‘What would it look like to do this ourselves?’ How can we pursue this?”

If I’m being honest, it was difficult early in the conversation to gauge their commitment to this whole starting a brewery thing. Their passion for the industry poured out as we drained our tulip glasses, and I became more convinced of their conviction.

“When we started six years ago, it was after the first day that Bryan invited us over to brew and we get a text from Dave saying, 'What are we going to name our brewery?' Our first brew was just the day before,” Lynch said. “So Bryan responded with, 'Slow down.' That's where the name comes from. We've been talking about this for six years and it got more serious as we went along.”

They tinkered with recipes and tossed out batch after batch to produce an IPA that to their palates tasted as good as those brewed by the best.

Vitamin Sea Brewing in Weymouth has been one of the breweries that has influenced Slow Down, in both the quality of its IPAs and how it built its business.

“I remember they (Vitamin Sea) even had a keg at The Hangover Pub in Worcester that sold out in a couple of hours. At that point they didn't have a taproom,” Wrenn said. “There was really no way to get their beer at that time. They were able to build a cult following in a grassroots fashion, through draft sales at restaurants, building up hype about their beer.”

Slow Down brews every two weeks, with the founders finding time for brew days in between full-time jobs and growing families. They recently invested in a new one-barrel brewing system, which will increase their output.

They hope to land accounts at some of the more well-known craft beer spots, from The Pint in Worcester, to The Abbey in Cambridge, to The Specialty Sandwich Co. in Holden. They’re banking on restaurant and bar owners enjoying both the taste and exclusivity of their beer.

“These restaurants and bars are getting beers from all the same place; they're getting it from the distributors,” Curini said. “From their standpoint, we have a leg up on the other breweries going through distributors, because we're the local guy. You can't get it anywhere else. You can only get it here.”

Until then they’ll take advantage of their draft account at Reunion to burnish their reputation.

“Our model is to let the beer speak for itself,” Wrenn said. “We're confident in our product. We know this is probably a more difficult way to go about it. I think that we've had the idea that if we get our beer into the right places, we're confident it can succeed.”

15 December, 2021