Nathan Sanborn is a home brewer who has expanded.
Sanborn is owner-brewer of Rising Tide Brewing Co. in Portland, and last week he released the company’s second year-round beer, Daymark, a pale ale brewed with about 22 percent rye grown in Vassalboro.
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I got to taste some of the Daymark last week at the Pineland Farms Welcome Center and Market, and it was a superb, easy-drinking beer. He didn’t have enough Daymark on hand to sell any, but it is available on a limited basis at beer specialty stores in southern Maine.
The rye adds a lot of flavor and aroma to the beer, and that flavor comes through because the drink is only lightly hopped.
Sanborn said that he made some test batches of the beer with rye that wasn’t from Maine using 30 percent rye. When he brewed a batch with 30 percent Maine rye, he had to dump it because it was overpowering.
“The use of local rye gives Daymark a flavor unique among Maine beers,” he said. “We were thrilled to be able to incorporate local Maine rye into this beer.”
Sanborn said the first batch produced only 32 cases of Daymark — sold in 22-ounce bottles — but that he has been able to ramp up production, and there should be more of it available in the near future.
Rising Tide has produced two other beers as well: Ishmael, a copper altbier that is both hoppier and maltier than Daymark, and Ursa Minor, a wheat stout that is the company’s winter seasonal, close to unique in the market and absolutely excellent.
Rising Tide is located in the same complex at One Industrial Way in Portland as Maine Beer Co., and that proximity affected his choices, Sanborn said. He waited until his third beer to produce a pale ale, because Maine Beer has one. And he keeps his beer lighter on the hops, because Maine Beer’s offerings tend to be hoppy.
Rising Tide uses a one-barrel brewing system, with a barrel being about 30 gallons. Sanborn, who works alone, takes about three hours to make a batch, so he works nine hours a day producing 90 gallons of beer.
He started small because his company is sort of an experiment.
“I wanted to see if I could make beer that is good enough that people would want to buy it,” he said.
Although Sanborn works full-time at Rising Tide, he says he isn’t making money yet. His wife, Heather, is a lawyer who works out of Lewiston, and she has been subsidizing his brewery business as well as helping out in the brewery occasionally.
Sanborn said he is going to see how the business progresses throughout the summer and then decide whether he should expand to a larger brewing system.
BECAUSE BRIAN MAILHOT, manager of the Pineland Farms Market, likes to have five or six beers available at a tasting, Sanborn recommended several other beers to be tasted last week.
My favorite of the three was Monschoff Schwarzbier, brewed by Kulmbacher in Germany. It is a dry black lager and has a good strong flavor, just a little bit hoppy. I am a big fan of schwarzbier, and this is one of the best.
A REPORT FROM the nonprofit Brewers Association says that Portland’s Shipyard is the 19th largest craft brewery in the country, based on 2010 sales volume. It is the only Maine beer company to make the list.
Boston Beer Co. is the largest craft brewer — and hits No. 5 on the list of all brewers, craft or otherwise.
Some of the companies trailing Shipyard surprised me. Anchor Brewing, perhaps the first craft brewery in the country, is 23rd, and Rogue is 25th. It is probably all that Pumpkinhead that puts them over the top.
Tom Atwell can be contacted at 791-6362 or at:
tatwell@pressherald.com
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