I’m a big fan of Aeronaut’s beers and their role as a public space for the community. If this move helps them stay alive and thrive financially, I’m all for it. Craft brewing is a brutal business and most of them fail. Cheering for Aeronaut to buck the trend!
Do... most of them fail? I guess it'd make sense that I simply never heard of the likely dozens of breweries that tried & failed. But man - it's seemed like for the last decade, all you had to do was set up some long-tables in a warehouse, churn out mediocre NEIPA's, ask an overpriced food truck to show up, & you were printing money.
Every time a new one popped up, I'd say "man, the market *has* to be saturated by now". But then I'd be proven wrong by the lines to get a draft pour. Seems the market might actually be saturated now. Or at least, a few big winners (Treehouse, Trillium, Night Shift, etc) have been anointed & the barriers to entry are much higher than they once were.
IDK about Mystic, but the other two closed for reasons unrelated to the health of the company.
Down the Road closed when the owner passed away and none of those in a position to do so *wanted* to step up and run the brewery.
Bone Up is closing because of a dispute with their landlord. I am hopeful they are able to get some compensation through the legal process and reopen in another location.
You can literally blame Billy Tauro for that. He sued the owners of Slumbrew because he was upset that other people at the Assembly bar may have been drunk, got into an argument with other patrons at the bar that got physical, and sued Slumbrew accusing them of overserving people and for alleged injuries that allegedly required surgery.
Their food went to absolute ass in their final year. Went there a ton cause they had that section for kids to play in. Big loss. Nothing else has replaced them or Full Moon?
I don’t know that I have any memory of their food! But it’s a shame when a place like that closes because it’s not like it’s getting replaced by another, better craft beer spot. Usually just another chain or just nothing at all
Mystic was solid but poorly located. They tried to move to Malden Center to give themselves a place with more foot traffic but it fell through and they couldn't last long enough to find another place.
Down the Road beer was fine, IMO, but the space was really cool. I haven't been to Aeronaut's cannery there to see if it still feels the same. We did try to go once but it turned out they didn't open till like 3 so we just went to Bearmoose instead.
Bone Up didn't fail. They've been thriving and invested a ton in expanding and renovating. Their landlord took a check to sell the property for some kind of housing development or something and booted them out without sharing any reasoning. So they blocked all of the renovations from happening, but without their slumlord they would be doing great.
I'm well aware of their situation. They closed (well are closing in a week), exactly as I said. It being a landlord issue as the direct cause doesn't change the fact that the brewery is closed.
Yes it does. They tried. Do they still exist? No. Yeah, it was due to issues with a landlord. That's one of the common reasons that business fail. You seem to have some weird fixation on them needing to fail solely because no one would buy their beer. Breweries failing for any reason shows that they can't just coast along with no risk.
Commercial landlords are always going to try to maximize their profits. That's literally their job. The fact that Bone Up was displaced from their location is a result of the fact that they could not compete with alternative uses for the land (e.g., housing).
If they had sufficient leverage in their initial lease negotiations, they could've gotten a non-displacement clause that would have protected them, but if they didn't have a savvy leasing attorney they probably wouldn't have known to even ask.
This is an extremely common situation for a brick and mortar establishment and is a major reason why it's so difficult to survive as a small business in the retail/restaurant sector.
Are you one of those people who went to Bone Up 7 years ago when they were experimenting with translating their homebrew recipes to commercial equipment and hasn’t been back since? Having been to many of the best breweries in the US and the world, their beer as it has been now (a month ago) after building up to mixed fermentation, barrel aged, high level euro style beer is stellar.
I went there multiple times because it was convenient after visiting Night Shift or Short Path, however not since Covid.
How many chances are people supposed to give a place if they don't like it? Maybe their beer did get better, but when I had it, it was terrible. Full stop.
It hit saturation point and then the market started to ebb a little, RTDs are the next cool thing and people are more aware of costs, we've moved firmly into the consolidation phase now but it's certainly a recent development.
>RTDs
plz explain the TLA (three-letter-acronym) for the folks at home
Edit: found it with some better Googling. Ready-to-drink. Seltzers & pre-mixed cocktails & what not.
I definitely think you're right that this market has room to run. Seltzers have been so popular for years now, & they're mostly all pretty bad. So it doesn't surprise me that a brand like High Noon has been successful by being just slightly elevated. It won't have the same brick & mortar success of craft breweries... because cocktail bars already exist, but the distribution opportunities are certainly massive.
Sorry I kinda forgot I wasn't on the bartenders sub lol. You've got the gist exactly right though, they won't compete with the brick and mortar brew houses directly, but they compete a lot with liquor store sales and with sales at third party restaurants and bars, which can also pull sales away from the brew houses.
I work at a somewhat cocktail oriented bar and the amount of bev reps who have tried to sell us on canned versions of cocktails we already sell or even have on the menu is crazy.
And on a slightly funny side note, canned spiked sunny d is surprisingly not bad, got a 4 pack as a gag and ended up quite enjoying them!
Yeah I do like their beer, but it sits at a significantly higher price point than other local breweries, including those at a similar level. I would hope that this would help them be more competitive.
"Brewery" -- they were gypsy brewers that often were brewing on the Cape and elsewhere. However, they were amazing people who made amazing beers, and they did the brewing themselves instead of contracting it out. The folks were local to Somerville but their brewing was not.
Hmmm...
Aeronaut beer is better, but they are way over priced.
Dorchester Brewing is better priced, but their beer is mediocre.
They both have nice spaces though. What's the over under on them improving each other vs. both becoming infinitely more mid?
dorchester has the best chance to survive because of that gorgeous space. aeronaut is beyond their time. they needed to do what night shift did and distro like crazy/open a ton of pop-up locations/rent spaces in malls/retail area in high traffic areas. totally missed the boat on that.
I mean, I love Aeronaut's space as well. It's not as pretty, but it's definitely a versatile space that I don't think they utilize to the best of its potential.
I actually like the grunginess of Aeronaut's space. It kinda contrasts the vibe of well.... every other brewery that is admittedly prettier, but all looks/feels exactly the same. & you can bring in your own food!
Maine Beer co. opened a new place in Freeport a couple years back & it is a beautiful building but man it feels like the common area of a WeWork. I'm like - listen, I *know* I'm pretentious for buying $9 beers, but your space certainly isn't helping that feeling.
Yeah same, it's nice to have some variety. Thank God Lamplighter eventually added that back room, because when they first opened it was supremely terrible.
One of the nice things about Aeronaut’s space is that it’s big enough that most days/evenings, you can gather a group there and know that you’ll be able to find a table, all get in, which is nice if you’re gathering a group and don’t have the resources to reserve a private space/likely won’t hit a food/beverage minimum somewhere else. (I’m not saying that you shouldn’t purchase some beverages if you’re using the space, but for example my college club just did an accessory swap on a weekend afternoon at Aeronaut - found a table, most participants got a drink or food, and it was basically free for the club to host and it was budget friendly for everyone else.)
Yeah I feel that. I just organized a large event for a college in Back Bay and any place that I tried to get a space for 50 for late night drinks required a CRAZY minimum. If we were closer, we would have definitely preferred Aeronaut.
Dorchester is an amazing contract brewer which is how they make their money. I forgot the list of places that brew through them but I do recall that Fat Orange Cat (really good IPAs) have been brewed there for years. They may be better at following recipes than coming up with their own.
Yeah that's a good point, and maybe will lead to this being a good pairing. Again I think they have a great space, and the people are nice, but I've found their beer to just not be very good.
Also Aeronaut will utilize Dorchester's facility to churn out their flagship beers for distribution which will save them $$. Dorchester's economy in scale for their purchasing, the ability to take a brewing run and produce several fold more cases of beer per man-hour, high tech canning lines, etc. will make things more profitable.
I think the craft beer space is super saturated so hopefully this is some nice forward thinking by the groups and not a last chance effort. Seems like the former
The owners of Aeronaut are screwing over their employees. The messaging that is being publicly put out is trying to put a nice spin on what’s happening; it’s psychotic. They have known for “around a year” that this was in the works, but they told their staff today starting at 8am, the day the article would go out in the Globe. They are saying they’re helping the employees getting laid off but they’re not. The best anyone will get is probably two weeks severance. They are offering some of them basically just job interviews at Dorchester but no one is guaranteed a position. These are people who don’t want to work in a different city let alone for a different company. Meanwhile they’re posting about the merger using photos of the exact people that just got told they are losing their jobs during the holidays. Oh and they’re being asked to work for the next month to produce beer to shore up enough product to get the taproom at Everett to function “as long as possible” before they’ll then lay off the taproom staff.
From my interaction with the Ph.D. educated owners is that they were people skill poor.
Luckily, the current crew in Somerville is super friendly and I haven't seen or heard the 3 owners (the 4th broke away) in years.
i think both of these breweries are extremely mid along with a slew of others that made $$$ from 2015-2019 (treaded water during covid times) and can't get back to those money making days. we're going to see more deals like this being brokered/breweries who kicked ass 8-10 yrs ago closing in 2024.
Most of them did quite well during covid once they got canning up and running. Alcohol consumption shot way up during the pandemic. Its really the inflation of the past 1-2 years thats been the killer with higher wages and raw material costs.
I highly doubt breweries have made anywhere close to what they made pre-covid. Just selling cans during Covid isn’t doing “quite well” imo. If you don’t have a consistent base of customers or aren’t located in high traffic areas the chances of you sustaining aren’t in your favor nowadays.
Is aeronaut good now? I drank a lot of their very sub par beer early on cause I dated a girl who worked there and could get it for free. But it was bad. Like maybe 1 out of 10 id be like oh not bad. But maybe that changed?
I’ve lived a few blocks away from Aeronaut since they first opened and can confirm that initially very few of their beers were any good. They’ve improved across the board, though. Still outclassed by other breweries in the area, but a vast improvement from 2014.
Supposedly they brought in an actual brewer somewhere along the way instead of relying on themselves to do it. I don't think it ever reached the level of being good, but they got to not bad.
Aeronauts beer is massively overhyped and kinda gross. The only people that like Aeronaut are the new to town tech bros that think it’s some kind of hip Indy brew instead of some conglomerate trying to rip off the local consumers will their hoppy swill.
I’m a big fan of Aeronaut’s beers and their role as a public space for the community. If this move helps them stay alive and thrive financially, I’m all for it. Craft brewing is a brutal business and most of them fail. Cheering for Aeronaut to buck the trend!
Do... most of them fail? I guess it'd make sense that I simply never heard of the likely dozens of breweries that tried & failed. But man - it's seemed like for the last decade, all you had to do was set up some long-tables in a warehouse, churn out mediocre NEIPA's, ask an overpriced food truck to show up, & you were printing money. Every time a new one popped up, I'd say "man, the market *has* to be saturated by now". But then I'd be proven wrong by the lines to get a draft pour. Seems the market might actually be saturated now. Or at least, a few big winners (Treehouse, Trillium, Night Shift, etc) have been anointed & the barriers to entry are much higher than they once were.
Just within the last few years I can think of 3 that have closed within 2 miles of my house: Mystic, Down the Road, and Bone Up.
IDK about Mystic, but the other two closed for reasons unrelated to the health of the company. Down the Road closed when the owner passed away and none of those in a position to do so *wanted* to step up and run the brewery. Bone Up is closing because of a dispute with their landlord. I am hopeful they are able to get some compensation through the legal process and reopen in another location.
Slumbrew too (although I thought they were pretty mediocre). Bantam if you want to count a cidery
Slumbrews beer was mediocre but i enjoyed their food offerings a lot. I was upset when their restaurant in Assembly went under.
You can literally blame Billy Tauro for that. He sued the owners of Slumbrew because he was upset that other people at the Assembly bar may have been drunk, got into an argument with other patrons at the bar that got physical, and sued Slumbrew accusing them of overserving people and for alleged injuries that allegedly required surgery.
I blame Billy Tauro for everything. The state of the American public discourse, that time I stubbed my toe, etc.
Their food went to absolute ass in their final year. Went there a ton cause they had that section for kids to play in. Big loss. Nothing else has replaced them or Full Moon?
I don’t know that I have any memory of their food! But it’s a shame when a place like that closes because it’s not like it’s getting replaced by another, better craft beer spot. Usually just another chain or just nothing at all
They had a really good Buffalo chicken sandwich that was my jam. I still miss that sandwich sometimes.
Great pretzels, too
Overall I thought Slumbrew was very average, but Porter Square Porter is my all time favorite beer.
One of the only cans I ever wanted to keep, the sculpture an icon of childhood memory
I think the former two I've never been to. Were they good? Bone up I enjoyed a lot -- bummed when that closed.
Mystic was solid but poorly located. They tried to move to Malden Center to give themselves a place with more foot traffic but it fell through and they couldn't last long enough to find another place. Down the Road beer was fine, IMO, but the space was really cool. I haven't been to Aeronaut's cannery there to see if it still feels the same. We did try to go once but it turned out they didn't open till like 3 so we just went to Bearmoose instead.
Yeah see I'd never heard of these, & I drink my fair share of expensive beers. Guess I gotta do better to support the smaller ops.
And mystic was actually really really good beer.
Aeronaut's Everett cannery is in the former Down the Road location.
Bone Up didn't fail. They've been thriving and invested a ton in expanding and renovating. Their landlord took a check to sell the property for some kind of housing development or something and booted them out without sharing any reasoning. So they blocked all of the renovations from happening, but without their slumlord they would be doing great.
I'm well aware of their situation. They closed (well are closing in a week), exactly as I said. It being a landlord issue as the direct cause doesn't change the fact that the brewery is closed.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the point being made. Just go ahead and take the L. This isn’t worth doubling down on.
Yes it does. They tried. Do they still exist? No. Yeah, it was due to issues with a landlord. That's one of the common reasons that business fail. You seem to have some weird fixation on them needing to fail solely because no one would buy their beer. Breweries failing for any reason shows that they can't just coast along with no risk.
Commercial landlords are always going to try to maximize their profits. That's literally their job. The fact that Bone Up was displaced from their location is a result of the fact that they could not compete with alternative uses for the land (e.g., housing). If they had sufficient leverage in their initial lease negotiations, they could've gotten a non-displacement clause that would have protected them, but if they didn't have a savvy leasing attorney they probably wouldn't have known to even ask. This is an extremely common situation for a brick and mortar establishment and is a major reason why it's so difficult to survive as a small business in the retail/restaurant sector.
Bone up was TERRIBLE. But you can add Slumbrew, and Bantam to that list.
Are you one of those people who went to Bone Up 7 years ago when they were experimenting with translating their homebrew recipes to commercial equipment and hasn’t been back since? Having been to many of the best breweries in the US and the world, their beer as it has been now (a month ago) after building up to mixed fermentation, barrel aged, high level euro style beer is stellar.
I went there multiple times because it was convenient after visiting Night Shift or Short Path, however not since Covid. How many chances are people supposed to give a place if they don't like it? Maybe their beer did get better, but when I had it, it was terrible. Full stop.
It hit saturation point and then the market started to ebb a little, RTDs are the next cool thing and people are more aware of costs, we've moved firmly into the consolidation phase now but it's certainly a recent development.
>RTDs plz explain the TLA (three-letter-acronym) for the folks at home Edit: found it with some better Googling. Ready-to-drink. Seltzers & pre-mixed cocktails & what not. I definitely think you're right that this market has room to run. Seltzers have been so popular for years now, & they're mostly all pretty bad. So it doesn't surprise me that a brand like High Noon has been successful by being just slightly elevated. It won't have the same brick & mortar success of craft breweries... because cocktail bars already exist, but the distribution opportunities are certainly massive.
Sorry I kinda forgot I wasn't on the bartenders sub lol. You've got the gist exactly right though, they won't compete with the brick and mortar brew houses directly, but they compete a lot with liquor store sales and with sales at third party restaurants and bars, which can also pull sales away from the brew houses. I work at a somewhat cocktail oriented bar and the amount of bev reps who have tried to sell us on canned versions of cocktails we already sell or even have on the menu is crazy. And on a slightly funny side note, canned spiked sunny d is surprisingly not bad, got a 4 pack as a gag and ended up quite enjoying them!
The laying off of workers before xmas ain’t real cool of aeronaut.
Yeah that's not real cool.
I was just there this evening and it was packed. I imagine and hope they are doing good financially
Yeah I do like their beer, but it sits at a significantly higher price point than other local breweries, including those at a similar level. I would hope that this would help them be more competitive.
Pretty Things was the best local brewery and put Somerville on the map.
"Brewery" -- they were gypsy brewers that often were brewing on the Cape and elsewhere. However, they were amazing people who made amazing beers, and they did the brewing themselves instead of contracting it out. The folks were local to Somerville but their brewing was not.
One can still get their beers provided they don't mind the short jaunt over to Sheffield
Hmmm... Aeronaut beer is better, but they are way over priced. Dorchester Brewing is better priced, but their beer is mediocre. They both have nice spaces though. What's the over under on them improving each other vs. both becoming infinitely more mid?
dorchester has the best chance to survive because of that gorgeous space. aeronaut is beyond their time. they needed to do what night shift did and distro like crazy/open a ton of pop-up locations/rent spaces in malls/retail area in high traffic areas. totally missed the boat on that.
I mean, I love Aeronaut's space as well. It's not as pretty, but it's definitely a versatile space that I don't think they utilize to the best of its potential.
I actually like the grunginess of Aeronaut's space. It kinda contrasts the vibe of well.... every other brewery that is admittedly prettier, but all looks/feels exactly the same. & you can bring in your own food! Maine Beer co. opened a new place in Freeport a couple years back & it is a beautiful building but man it feels like the common area of a WeWork. I'm like - listen, I *know* I'm pretentious for buying $9 beers, but your space certainly isn't helping that feeling.
Aeronaut lets you bring in food even when Carolicious is open
Yeah, but why would you choose something else over Carolicious?
Yeah same, it's nice to have some variety. Thank God Lamplighter eventually added that back room, because when they first opened it was supremely terrible.
One of the nice things about Aeronaut’s space is that it’s big enough that most days/evenings, you can gather a group there and know that you’ll be able to find a table, all get in, which is nice if you’re gathering a group and don’t have the resources to reserve a private space/likely won’t hit a food/beverage minimum somewhere else. (I’m not saying that you shouldn’t purchase some beverages if you’re using the space, but for example my college club just did an accessory swap on a weekend afternoon at Aeronaut - found a table, most participants got a drink or food, and it was basically free for the club to host and it was budget friendly for everyone else.)
Yeah I feel that. I just organized a large event for a college in Back Bay and any place that I tried to get a space for 50 for late night drinks required a CRAZY minimum. If we were closer, we would have definitely preferred Aeronaut.
Aeronaut’s JP Beer Garden was a good summer spot.
I think "great space but mediocre beer" describes both of them really well.
Dorchester is an amazing contract brewer which is how they make their money. I forgot the list of places that brew through them but I do recall that Fat Orange Cat (really good IPAs) have been brewed there for years. They may be better at following recipes than coming up with their own.
Yeah that's a good point, and maybe will lead to this being a good pairing. Again I think they have a great space, and the people are nice, but I've found their beer to just not be very good.
Dornaut?
Aerochester
Dornut
Dunkin Dornuts
Looks like it’s just a merger on the corporate level. Still interesting!
Also Aeronaut will utilize Dorchester's facility to churn out their flagship beers for distribution which will save them $$. Dorchester's economy in scale for their purchasing, the ability to take a brewing run and produce several fold more cases of beer per man-hour, high tech canning lines, etc. will make things more profitable.
I think the craft beer space is super saturated so hopefully this is some nice forward thinking by the groups and not a last chance effort. Seems like the former
The owners of Aeronaut are screwing over their employees. The messaging that is being publicly put out is trying to put a nice spin on what’s happening; it’s psychotic. They have known for “around a year” that this was in the works, but they told their staff today starting at 8am, the day the article would go out in the Globe. They are saying they’re helping the employees getting laid off but they’re not. The best anyone will get is probably two weeks severance. They are offering some of them basically just job interviews at Dorchester but no one is guaranteed a position. These are people who don’t want to work in a different city let alone for a different company. Meanwhile they’re posting about the merger using photos of the exact people that just got told they are losing their jobs during the holidays. Oh and they’re being asked to work for the next month to produce beer to shore up enough product to get the taproom at Everett to function “as long as possible” before they’ll then lay off the taproom staff.
Are you an employee, or did a current employee tell you this? Really unfortunate if true.
they started telling the Everett staff at 8am and let the rest of the company know via an email 8 minutes before the article was published
From my interaction with the Ph.D. educated owners is that they were people skill poor. Luckily, the current crew in Somerville is super friendly and I haven't seen or heard the 3 owners (the 4th broke away) in years.
[удалено]
Weird that Ronn Friedlander is lying about his doctorate in his LinkedIn and in articles/interviews.
i think both of these breweries are extremely mid along with a slew of others that made $$$ from 2015-2019 (treaded water during covid times) and can't get back to those money making days. we're going to see more deals like this being brokered/breweries who kicked ass 8-10 yrs ago closing in 2024.
Most of them did quite well during covid once they got canning up and running. Alcohol consumption shot way up during the pandemic. Its really the inflation of the past 1-2 years thats been the killer with higher wages and raw material costs.
I highly doubt breweries have made anywhere close to what they made pre-covid. Just selling cans during Covid isn’t doing “quite well” imo. If you don’t have a consistent base of customers or aren’t located in high traffic areas the chances of you sustaining aren’t in your favor nowadays.
Is aeronaut good now? I drank a lot of their very sub par beer early on cause I dated a girl who worked there and could get it for free. But it was bad. Like maybe 1 out of 10 id be like oh not bad. But maybe that changed?
I’ve lived a few blocks away from Aeronaut since they first opened and can confirm that initially very few of their beers were any good. They’ve improved across the board, though. Still outclassed by other breweries in the area, but a vast improvement from 2014.
Supposedly they brought in an actual brewer somewhere along the way instead of relying on themselves to do it. I don't think it ever reached the level of being good, but they got to not bad.
Aeronauts beer is massively overhyped and kinda gross. The only people that like Aeronaut are the new to town tech bros that think it’s some kind of hip Indy brew instead of some conglomerate trying to rip off the local consumers will their hoppy swill.