USA, ME: Corner Point Brewing Co. aiming at June opening in Berwick

Two Mainers are transforming part of a historic Berwick building into a brewery, WGME reported on February 5.

Jamie Blood has been brewing beer for years. It started as a hobby when the Berwick native was living in New Mexico.

"First batch of beer we made, it was with a friend of mine down there, made it together, it was awful," Blood says, "So we were determined to try not to repeat it so we went down and bought a little bit of equipment about two weeks later, we brewed another batch and I was hooked."

After a few more batches, his brother-in-law Jeff Tassinari tasted potential.

"So I encouraged him to make sure that if he ever moved back to Maine, that I'd love to start brewing with him," Tassinari says.

Blood did move back to Maine and they created Corner Point Brewing Co. A Kickstarter campaign raised more than $15,000 so they could go from home brewing to brick and mortar.

"I wasn't back here very long and I read in an article in a local newspaper, the title of the article was 'Berwick, a town beer can save'," says Blood.

It was a sign and soon they found the 19th-century property at 1 Sullivan Square.

"Right in the center of downtown, real close to the bridge," Blood says, a lot of visibility, so you know, we jumped on it."

"We have an area just off to the left of the building and directly adjacent to the river where we're going to have outdoor seating," Tassinari adds.

Once a car showroom, the mill building was most recently a church. As demolition began, pieces of history revealed themselves.

"One of the cool features that we came across is we're both employees of Hussey Seating right now," says Tassinari, "And you can look up at the beams that support the roof and in chalk is written Hussey."

The co-owners quickly realized they wanted to expose that history.

"That entire section of wall just fell off," Blood says, "It came off in one sheet and we just, we looked at that wall and we were like, 'Wow, that is just, that's perfect'."

Bringing beer to Berwick and the building back to its roots.

"If we just covered it up it's almost like it never existed," says Tassinari, "So keeping that heritage and that history is going to become very important to who we are as a business."

The goal for phase 1 of the project is to open the brewery and taproom in June. They'd like to eventually open a brewpub using other space in the building, which is currently available for functions.

05 February, 2018