Perched high on a platform overlooking shiny brew kettles and tanks, next to a windowed view of adjacent fields, Tom Abercrombie, Brewmaster at Sebago Brewing Company’s newly opened headquarters, can look down to see guests sipping his beer in the brewery’s expansive bar and dining area.

The platform’s location was carefully planned to not only give visitors a view of the brewers, but also give the brewers a view of their customers and community. The Sebago Brewing Company certainly deepened community roots with the opening of its new brewery in Gorham last week.

Almost within sight of the brewery are fields that supply the brewery with hops. Across the street is the locally owned Nappi Distributors, deliverers of the brewery’s canned beer throughout Cumberland and York counties. Eight miles to the west sits Sebago Lake, not only the inspiration for the company’s name, but also the source of up to 5000 gallons of water to be pumped into the brewery daily.

The new brewery was built by Gorham-based Great Falls Construction, and soon walking trails will lead out from its patios to the 250 acres of surrounding countryside, thanks to a partnership between the brewery and Shaw’s Brothers Family Foundation that owns the land.

The Town of Gorham has also been great to work with, according to Kai Adams, one of the brewery’s three founders. “We have establishments in a number of towns in Maine and nobody is better to work with than Gorham,” noted Adams.

Kai Adams, Brad Monarch and Tim Haines founded Sebago Brewing in 1998, and started brewing in their Gorham Village location seven years later. At that time there were only a few craft brewers in Maine, but many have opened since. Yet despite the increased competition, local brewers remain a uniquely collaborative lot. “When starting our first brewery in South Portland I could call any of the local brewers for help,” said Adams. “That wasn’t so true on the food side of the business.” In keeping with this spirit, Sebago helped Lone Pine Brewing, now the second brewer in Gorham, take over its old brewery in the Industrial Park. Both Lone Pine and Portland-based Allagash Brewery currently have a tap at the new Sebago Brewery.

These are mostly good times for craft brewers, but ever-increasing supply and more competition from large national brewers still makes planning for growth a tricky calculation. With many local competitors experiencing recent declines, Sebago had to be careful not to over expand, despite its own 20+ percent growth in sales.

The new brewery can produce 30% more beer in half the time which gives more flexibility but isn’t out of step with realistic growth projections. Besides, according to Adams, maintaining a consistent product and adding more styles of beer is more important to them than growing their distribution far beyond Maine, where 90% of their beer is currently distributed. “We’d rather go deep than wide with our growth,” said Adams.

This goal is evident when Adams shows off his “scalable pilot system” at the start of a brewery tour. These smaller units sit in contrast to the forest of tall kettles and fermenters nearby and can produce four smaller batches of different beers each month. This is where the brewers can experiment with new recipes, something they had little room for in the past.

Breweries these days are often about more than just beer. This “destination brewery” includes locally sourced wines and spirits, creative cocktails and an extensive, and frequently changing, bar menu. A large wood fired oven heats an assortment of specialty pizzas, from a standard Margherita to a Herb Short Rib Pizza. Entrees for the opening weeks include dishes such as Grilled Atlantic Salmon, Tap House Burgers, and Pappardelle Bolognese. Lake and beer inspired desserts include Sebago S’Mores and 2-Row Fried Ice Cream glazed with a “Lake Trout Stout ganache.”

While a few of these dishes will overlap with Sebago’s nearby brew pub on Elm Street, many will be unique, with the Village location continuing to provide a more extensive menu and serving most, if not all, of the beers created at the brewery. “Our Gorham brewpub is here to stay,” said Adams. “We expect it to remain a vibrant gathering place in the Village.”

All this production and service requires a lot of labor. Sebago hired forty-five employees to staff their new brewery, bringing the total number of employees within the company to over 220. Bar Manager Joseph Howard was surprised at how easily they filled these positions with qualified candidates. He had even higher expectations after a few weeks of training and preparation.

These expectations were quickly realized when the brewery lost power just a few hours after a soft opening on February 23 due to a traffic accident on Rt. 25. With guests filling the tap room, the staff remained calm and, “benefiting from taps power by nitrogen and ovens by wood,” kept the night going without much of a hitch. “We couldn’t ask for a better staff,” said Howard.

All in all, with servers wearing t-shirts proclaiming “Subject to Change,” you can expect to find something new among the 16 taps at the bar, perhaps while trying an appetizer of mussels or beet fries. Just don’t forget to look up and wave to the brewer.

The new brewery is located at 616 Main Street in Gorham. The tasting room is open Sun-Wed from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. and Thurs-Sat from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. For more information, visit sebagobrewing.com or call 856-2537.