BREWING
Fox Farm, Salem CT - Spring 2019
From the soils, come the spoils The farm breweries of southern New England
since 1651 and currently has 240 acres (for reference, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Eastern Massachu- setts in 1620). Lookout Farm has grown a lot of things over the years but it cur- rently sticks to staples of New England life, mainly apples. “We have 25 kinds of heirloom ap- ples,” says Lookout Farm’s brewer Aaron Mateychuk as he drives me around the sprawling property 20 miles from Bos- ton. The acreage also includes 50,000 trees of all fruits including pear and stone fruits and 3,900 heirloom trees from all over the world, including English Harry Master Black trees – and varieties like Jonah Gold which Mateychuk says are “good for eating and making pies”. While Lookout Farm caters to the ‘pick your own’ family fun of the au- tumnal leaf-peeper tourist, it started to make hard cider in 2014 – and to brew beer in 2018. Using mainly dessert ap- ples, the cider business took off with a few things on its side: cider in 2014 had made a huge leap in American sales thanks to brands like MillerCoors’ Crispin and Boston Beer Co.’s Angry Orchard. The ‘drink local’ movement was, and still is, in full force. And lastly, Lookout Farm cider is quite good. Mateychuk is fully invested in the local push – using local ingredients for his ciders and trying to keep it 100% from Lookout Farm (The farm grows stone fruit, pears, strawberries, cherries and is start- ing to experiment with hop varieties like Sorachi Ace and Centennial) but if what
By Em Sauter
New England was founded because the Pilgrims, es- caping religious persecution in Europe, were running low on beer. It was a stressful affair for these early settlers as beer was an essential part of their lives. On board, all pilgrims drank a quart a day of weak ‘ship’s beer’ instead of the germ-ridden water that could cause disease and death – a long way from today’s burgeoning cider and beer-making farm culture.
O nce situated in their new home, the Pilgrims eventually realised the soil of New England wasn’t particularly suited to what they would have normally grown due to its rocky makeup. So, like the brewers of today, they started to experiment with what they had available. They brewed using adjuncts, looking for assistance in foods the Native Americans introduced to them like pumpkin and corn. Their barley crop eventually would take to the land as barley is a hearty plant. They also looked to a more sustain-
able drink like cider. The May ower did have a cider press on board. The Mas- sachusetts Bay colonists further north planted apple trees just days after they arrived in 1630, and by 1775 almost one in ten New England families had a cider press. This sets the stage for a renais- sance currently growing in New England; a return to basics in life and in drinking. The history Lookout Farm and Brewery in South Natick, Massachusetts has been a farm
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