HARRISON — A new brewery is looking to make a splash in the Maine beer scene. A very small splash.

Lee Margolin of Harrison has spent the better part of two years preparing Pennesseewassee Brewing for its opening later this month. The tiny brewery can produce about 15 gallons of beer per batch, or half a barrel. That’s around 90 large, 22-ounce bottles per month.

The Lewiston native, with more than 20 years experience as a home brewer, said he doesn’t have any huge plans for the brewery. “People say, ‘You could be the next Baxter,’” he said, laughing. He said he doesn’t have any ambitions on that scale. He calls his a “nano brewery.”

He said he wants the Pennesseewassee brewery to be one with which people in the Oxford Hills and western Maine could identify with. For years, he’d wanted to call it “Crooked River Brewing,” after the river that runs by his house, but an Ohio brewery took that name.

Margolin said it’s important to him to have a local identity. He talked about pre-Prohibition America, where most breweries were smaller and regional.

“Slowly, that idea of having locally-produced beers and ales is coming back,” he said. While Western Maine has a couple of breweries in Bray’s Brewpub in Naples and Sunday River Brewing in Bethel, as well as Baxter and Gritty’s in Lewiston, the Oxford Hills region and western Maine have “a definite void.”

“I’ve gotten a lot of enthusiasm and support from local people and local businesses to move forward with it,” he said. One local bar owner wanted to carry his beer before even trying it, just because it’s from Harrison. His only question was, “Does it say it’s made in Harrison?” Margolin recalled.

“It’s that kind of encouragement that’s really gotten me to this point.”

Margolin’s first beer, Pennesseewassee Pale Ale, will have a release party Nov. 23 at Tucker’s Pub in Norway. After that, it’ll be available in several local pubs and stores, including Tucker’s Pub and the Fare Share Market in Norway.

He describes the beer as “fairly hoppy, but moderate in hops, moderate in alcohol.” Hops are used for bittering and flavoring in beer, to keep the sweetness of fermented malted barley from being overbearing.

Margolin began in earnest in April 2011, when he started researching regulations and converting an in-law apartment at his home into a brewery, installing the required steel sinks and replacing the floor with easy-to-clean linoleum.

Starting a brewery is complicated, both from a scientific and regulatory standpoint, but Margolin came especially equipped with his scientific background in neurophysiology and his work in regulatory affairs for a medical devices company.

Margolin has a doctorage in biology, as well as a master’s degree. He said his rigorous scientific background is “extremely important.” Beer is a living product, and creating a consistent product with live yeast can be difficult. “My experimental training was perfect for this,” he said.

“The regulatory overhead to launch one of these things is not trivial,” he said. “The process of getting a medical device approved is strangely similar to getting a brewer’s license,” he said with a laugh.

Even Margolin has been surprised by the rules. When he first submitted the label for Pennesseewassee Pale Ale, he was told that the 22-ounce bottles must also read “1 pint, 6 ounces” somewhere. He made the change and resubmitted it.

The label also says his beer is 4.5 percent alcohol by volume, which Margolin must stick with. But he’s free to change other aspects of the beer, like the hops used and the exact color and flavor without varying from the label. “If all of a sudden a batch of organic hops became available, I could try that.”

As a result, the beer could change from batch to batch. He’s hoping that will be fun for his customers. He said he can’t make many different styles of beer with his current setup, but the beers he does make will see some variation.

He’s also considering making consignment batches for people, and could fill requests for variants of his ale. “They could say, ‘Gee, could you make it just a little hoppier?’ and I could do that.”

treaves@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link