1. It's not in a place you would normally find a brewery. It's in a quaint, old building on main street in the tiny village of Miller's Falls. It's the kind of building you would normally find these days used for a boutique type shop in Main St. usa.
2. Both the tasting room and the brewery seemed very clean and well organized.
3. They don't brew any kind of beer that is normal recipe nor a session type beer. Everything is on the strong side and doesn't neatly fit any kind of style guideline. According to the guy that gave us the tour they don't even attempt to follow any style guidelines. They decide what they want the beer to taste like then they set out to make it.
4. It appears they brew 3 beers on a regular basis (Red Giant, Extra Special Oak, and Dark Element) and have rotating seasonals. At the time of our visit they still had some bottles of (Summer Pilsener Fusion, Vernal, and Altoberfest) but the Summer Pilsener was the current seasonal.
They let us have a taste of all three regulars and the Summer Pilsener before giving us the brewery tour. I was impressed with all three. These aren't beers I want to drink as part of a long session but they are nice to have around for a night when you just want to have one but you want that one to be something interesting and with some backbone.
Miller's Falls is a nice, sleepy little town not unusual for Western Mass. If I lived there I'd have to drink a lot of Element beer to keep from losing my mind.
A view into the brewery from Main Street.
Tasting room.
The brewery.
First beer tried at home ... the Altoberfest. It was described to me as a cross between the maltiness of an Oktoberfest and hoppiness of an Altbier. It was a very malty and boozy beer. My initial impression was that it was too boozy but I soon settled into it and quite enjoyed it. There was just enough hops to balance it out and make it drinkable.
I've also had the "Vernal". This is a (you guessed it) as spring seasonal. It's a souped up Weizenbock that was made with local malt from Valley Malt in Hadley (more on this place in another blog post).
That's as far as I got. Like I said they're not beers you drink quickly. I've still got 4 to get through but I'm in no rush. These are beers that you can let age for a while in the basement. Here's the whole lineup before I polished the first two off.
In summary Element is doing their own thing and are a nice addition to the Mass. beer world. I definately would take the time to visit again.
In the meantime we went to the Moan and Dove in Amherst right after the Element visit. Cheers!
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