At first glance it sounds like a joke. A craft beer aimed at menopausal women? With herbs and spices designed to possibly help symptoms? Cue the laugh track.

But Joanne Francis, co-owner of Portsmouth Brewery, is serious in the way that only a woman of a certain age can be serious, as in she’s been around enough to know what she’s doing — and if you don’t get it, well then, your loss. (See subhead.)

Francis, who has been in the craft beer industry for 26 years, first got the idea for a beer aimed at older women a few years ago. “I have seen a lot of beers developed. The focus is always on 21- to 35-year-old male,” she says, noting she brewed her first batch in her home in 1986. “As we’ve seen the craft beer industry grow and grow and grow, it’s so oversaturated. The same ground is constantly planted. How many IPAs can you possibly make? Here I am at 58. No one is talking to my peers who love beer, who drink a lot of beer, but no one is speaking to my menopausal friends.”

At the office, initial reaction to Francis’ idea was, um, flat. “’You can’t say menopause. It’s so distasteful to young men’,” she says. “I said screw it. I won’t push it. I have to respect that employees need to get behind this too.”

But then she and Portsmouth head brewer Matt Gallagher were talking one day and decided to make a small batch. “He’s very progressive and a new dad,” she says. “He has a new awareness of women in his life, so he said let’s do it.”

Joanne Francis and Matt Gallagher. Photo courtesy of Portsmouth Brewery.

Creating Libeeration took a lot of experimentation. It’s a gruit, which is made from an herb mixture rather than using hops. Francis was inspired in part to make a beer with a strong herbal mix from her own health issues. As someone with Lyme Disease and chronic migraines, she is no stranger to alternative health practices. “I have dabbled into having to know a lot of herbal remedies,” she says, noting she worked with natural health practitioners while experimenting to find the right herbal mix for Libeeration. (The beer includes motherwort, lemon balm, chamomile, stinging nettle, mugwort, rose, chickweed, and damiana.)

“I thought wouldn’t it be great to make a beer using some of these floral remedies,” she says. “Wouldn’t [women] appreciate being honored and being treated as if menopause is not a curse but a liberating part of your life. Let’s have a drink together and celebrate it.”

Alternative health fans (and women who’ve tried everything short of knocking themselves out with a hammer to get a good night’s sleep or dousing themselves in a cold shower to stop a hot flash) will recognize many of these herbs. Several can help calm and/or reduce moodiness. Damiana, meanwhile, can potentially help add moisture to your body. Francis and Gallagher started by making teas with the various herbs. “The herbs had to pass the tea test to be sure they had a nice flavor,” she says.

Francis has a simple response to skeptics who might question the potential health benefit of a beer. “This isn’t medicine,” she says. “I’m not trying to be a doctor. Even if it doesn’t help, it helps to know someone cared. That’s my primary purpose. What would be a nice tribute to women at a certain age. I’m making a flavorful beer with some nice properties that I think you would really like.”

It’s a prescription a lot of women appear to be ready to adopt. Portsmouth Brewery sold out of its first batch and is about to release its second batch. “It’s been ridiculous. I never expected the amount of attention,” Francis says. “We’ve been getting hundreds of emails from every state and across the world.”

So far, Libeeration is only available at Portsmouth Brewery, but Francis hopes to change that. “The next step is to graduate this beer so we brew it in a bigger facility.”

Take that, skeptics.

Joanne Francis–co-owner, Portsmouth Brewery
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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Top image: The Libeeration ladies. All photos courtesy of Portsmouth Brewery.

The post A Libeerating Experience appeared first on Take Magazine.

What do you do on the day you release the cultiest of cult beers in a special-edition can designed by an illustrator-artist with a growing following? You call the cops.

Tree House Brewing in the western Massachusetts town of Monson did just that recently to control the throngs descending on its dirt parking lot over the latest sporadic release of a beer called the Juice Machine. Craft beer drinkers are fanatical about this six-year-old rural brewery, the entirety of whose sales come from its on-premise retail store. It produces 14 of the 50 highest-rated beers on BeerAdvocate.

Like most Tree House beers, the Juice Machine is an American double IPA: very hoppy, very potent—and also very hazy according to what some consider a distinct, Northeast IPA sub-style associated with Tree House and its sought-after eastern-Mass peer Trillium.

Unlike most Tree House beers, the Juice Machine comes in a can with a robot on it. “I redid the robot from Lost in Space—he’s possessed by the beer and the fruit,” says illustrator and craft-beer fan Dean McKeever. The “fruit” is a play on both the prominent citrus and tropical notes associated with uber-hopped American IPAs, and the fact that these beers are so opaque they resemble orange juice.

“People flip out for [the Juice Machine],” says McKeever. He recalls the parking lot looking “like a Patriots game” when it was last released.

No. 29, photo by Nate Lanier

There’s also a fair amount of flipping out happening over Tree House’s Curiosity beers—single-release brews named simply after their number in the sequence. There have been 35 so far, and McKeever, who earned a bachelor of fine arts at UMass-Dartmouth in 2008, has designed unique labels for each release beginning with number 18.

Number 32, photo by Nate Lanier

He collaborates with Tree House brewer and cofounder Nate Lanier on the ideas for the cans. Dean Rohan, another cofounder, says, “They have a little bit of a theme behind them: They’re natural, woodsy.” And they are truly collector’s items, as evidenced by the robust online trade of Curiosity cans, whether they’re full or empty. Tree House no longer announces the release of these beers because of the aforementioned crowd-control issues.

Number 18, photo by Nate Lanier

The Curiosity cans are more representative of McKeever’s style, which is rooted in nature: mountains, trees, cabins emitting wisps of chimney smoke. He names both Van Gogh and Bob “The Joy of Painting” Ross as inspirations. “I’m inspired by vintage elements, illustrations from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” he says. “I try not to beat my work to death with too much color or line work.” At the same time, he adds, “I try to create a lot of depth—the illusion that there’s three dimensions.” All of these influences and intentions came together as the Curiosity series entered its thirties.

“I’m really stoked to be a freelance artist,” McKeever says. “A lot of it is because of my connection with Tree House.”

Number 25, photo by Nate Lanier

McKeever lives in East Longmeadow, only about a half-hour drive from Monson. (Tree House is building a second facility in Charlton that will greatly expand its capacity.) When he’s not designing labels for Tree House or other breweries—including Tioga Sequoia in California and Haint Blue in Alabama—he designs skateboard decks for Theory in Northampton and Hoodlum in Hartford, and shows his prints around western Massachusetts.

Check out McKeever’s work at Beerology in Northampton and at the Made in Massachusetts Festival at the Big E July 8 and 9. Or check him out on Instagram, where the artist’s Wednesday night “live draws” have a growing audience.

Dean McKeever–illustrator
Easthampton, Massachusetts
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Images by Nate Lanier

The post The Art of the Can appeared first on Take Magazine.

Since joining Green Mountain Taps in 2015, 3D designer Charlie Peckar has worked with 700 breweries. With nearly 5,000 craft breweries in the United States and draft culture growing, it’s likely Peckar will see that number continue to grow. Green Mountain offers designer tap handles as unique as the brews themselves.

Peckar cites both an expertise with wood and their U.S. factory location in Hinsdale, New Hampshire (the business was founded in Guilford, Vermont, and later moved across the river) as two reasons for Green Mountain’s success. “Most of our competitors source all their labor to China. We are the only company that makes 100 percent of our product in America,” he says. Craft brewers of New England, whose beverages and brands often trade on the importance of local production, find a kindred spirit in Green Mountain. The proof is in the pints: “We make pretty much all of the tap handles for the state of Vermont. We do Zero Gravity, 14th Star, Lawson’s. . .”

It doesn’t end with tap handles. “We do signage, we can source printed glassware. . .The idea is to be the one-stop shop for brewery needs.”

At McNeill’s brewery in Brattleboro, Vermont, shiny wooden tasting trays that Peckar designed sit in a stack behind the bar. “I was proud of that design. Not quite as ergonomic as I had planned, but I think they look pretty good.” Stumbling upon his work is common. Gigging around Vermont with his “folkgrass” band Pinedrop, Peckar often runs into handles he conceived.

Green Mountain Taps creates more than designer tap handles. Custom flight set anyone? | Photo by Charlie Peckar

What is work for a 3D designer? For Peckar, it’s overseeing a piece as it evolves from initial client call, through a computer rendering, and out to a finished product. “I’ve got all the assets for production. All the shapes and models and plans come from me.” Just like beer, custom tap handles are a scientific art. Peckar, who focused on glassblowing in college, “picked up almost all of it on the fly.”

Once hired, “I learned CAD software and how to use all of the machines that we work with.” Depending on client needs, the Green Mountain production team will use 3D printers, metalwork, lasers, and more to make a tap. Custom designs require willingness: “We will work around any idea. We’ve used things like tiny bells and rope. Some things have been welded together.”

Though the process is complex, and few handles alike, Peckar jokes that the mechanics lead to one place: “They all kinda work the same way. They screw onto the tap, and you pull.”

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Charlie Peckar – tap handle engineer for Green Mountain Taps
Hinsdale, New Hampshire
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Top image by Derek Sensale

The post Getting a Handle on Craft Brewing appeared first on Take Magazine.