1/14/2024 0 Comments Harpoon ipa enjoy before dateThat happened in the summer of 2014 and I think it brought out a sense of security, because there were a lot of acquisitions happening around that time. Since you’ve been there for a while, what did you think of that move and how has it affected morale?īickford: It’s been great. O&A: You say “beer brings people together.” On that note, it’s interesting that a couple of years ago Harpoon became employee-owned. So we like to make beers that we want to drink and that we enjoy. We put a lot of attention on creating great beers, but we ultimately started as consumers, not as home-brewers. We have three festivals a year at our Boston brewery and one at our Vermont brewery. We have a great beer hall that overlooks downtown Boston and the Boston Harbor. O&A: Harpoon’s motto is “Love Beer, Love Life.” What does that mean to you?īickford: What that means to me is liking good beer, but also liking a good time, because beer brings people together. We were actually the first brewery to have our employees take the malts home to have them toast them in their ovens. One of the hops we use is grown in that climate-Cascade-along with Apollo, which are the bittering hops. Our IPA started as a summer seasonal when we launched it and was a tribute to the Pacific Northwest. Adding a ton of hops was not the norm back then. So an IPA in ’93 when consumers were used to things not as hoppy and not as dark as our 5.9 percent, 42 IBU IPA. And we were one of the first IPAs brewed on the East Coast back then. O&A: So is it safe to say the IPA is the flagship of the operation?īickford: Yes, the IPA is a little under half of our business. So we’ve stayed on top of that as well, even though our IPA has been around since 1993, and some of our seasonals-like Winter Warmer-since ‘88. We’ve been around for a while, so there are a lot of things that we’ve learned over the years as far as attention to quality and what consumers are looking for.īut then you also have to stay relevant because beer is constantly evolving. That has obviously evolved, but a few things are still true. An early part of the craft beer movement was to bring some of the European styles-stuff the Europeans had been brewing for hundreds of years-to the U.S. They wanted to bring some of those offerings and some of that culture. our cofounders traveled in and around Europe and saw how those breweries were ingrained in those communities with delicious beer. Photo courtesy of Bruce Bickfordīickford: Yeah, we started brewing in 1986, and the realm of craft beer has really shifted in that time. “I thought I wanted to be a lacrosse coach.”Īfter forming a connection to former Harpoon CEO Rich Doyle, who just happened to have played lacrosse at Harvard (before Bickford’s coaching tenure), and meeting some of the Harpoon people, he decided to sell beer.īruce Bickford holds a 20-pound lobster at Yankee Lobster Co., a seafood market located next door to Harpoon’s Boston brewery. “I didn’t come in with beverage background,” says Bickford, now 33. But the festivals, and the people at Harpoon, changed his career trajectory. At the time-2011-Bickford was the lacrosse coach at Harvard-a prestigious job, especially for someone in his mid-20s. The brand quickly attracted a following, including Bruce Bickford, who attended several Harpoon beer festivals at the Boston brewery. Geary, which today is New England’s oldest craft brewery. Harpoon Brewery is one that can.īorn in Boston in 1986, Harpoon arrived on the scene just two years after Jim Koch started brewing Sam Adams and three years after Portland’s D.L. Not many American craft breweries can say they’ve been around for more than three decades. The regional manager for the Boston brewery discusses its culture, its recent collaboration with Dunkin’ Donuts, and how a Harvard lacrosse coach ended up selling one of the East Coast’s longest-running IPAs
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