Lone Pine Brewing Company, a Maine based brewery focused on American ales and small batch specialty beers, held its public grand opening of its Gorham tasting room on April 13.
The company was started by co-founders Tom Madden and John Paul in March 2016 at Anderson Street in the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland. In April 2017, Lone Pine moved its production facility to Gorham, while maintaining the Portland location as a tasting room and experimental space.
For Madden, purchasing the turnkey space in Gorham from Sebago Brewing Company allowed Lone Pine to expand and grow their brand. We can now “focus almost exclusively on product quality and consistency. We went from 8-9 employees to 25. We just added five new tanks and can produce around 13,000 barrels a year – almost double what we were doing before.”
Photo courtesy of Lone Pine BrewingLone Pine Brewing held a soft opening on April 11 to welcome visitors to its new tasting room in the Gorham Industrial Park.
As a testament to the company’s innovation and growth, in 2018 Lone Pine was ranked fifth by the Brewers Association in their list of the 50 fastest growing small and independent craft breweries in the country. For Madden and Paul, “it’s very cool to see people so excited about the things that we are doing but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Lone Pine has collaborations planned in five states and three countries this year. “We want to cross markets and share what we do with other breweries. We love what we do and we want to work collectively; we are students of the craft, not competitors,” said Madden.
When asked what they expect to accomplish next, Madden simply states that their customers and fans dictate what they will do next. “We didn’t expect to open a tasting room in Gorham; we didn’t think there would be a demand. But our fans kept on asking when we were going to open one, so we responded.”
Photo courtesy of Lone Pine BrewingPictured (l to r) are Richard Bateman, Kevin Sullivan, co-founders John Paul and Tom Madden, and PJ Plummer.
“We are really excited for people to see the tasting room,” said Madden, whose father built the bar using repurposed wood from shipping pallets. “The residents of Gorham and town officials have been so welcoming and helpful during this process; we cannot wait to really plug into the community, get to know our neighbors in the Industrial Park, and show the community what we have been doing.”
Lone Pine’s tasting room at 219 Anderson Street in Portland will remain open and operate business as usual.
The tasting room in Gorham, 48 Sanford Drive, Building B, will be open Thursday–Sunday from 12-8 p.m. Lone Pine can be reached at 207-536-4952 or by visiting lonepinebrewery.com.