Our Beers

While specializing in New England IPAs and hop-forward styles, Nick has award winning expertise in a variety of styles, including collecting 9 medals across 6 different styles in just 15 homebrewing competition entries over the last few years.

Below is a list of the specific award-winning recipes.

In addition to expertise in the above styles, Nick DeFae has additionally been undertaking significant R&D into new and innovative styles:

Small Batch Series

An exploration of “tiny” beers (under 3.0% ABV) has led to significant improvement in the process of creating low-alcohol but big-flavor drinks. This process involves careful manipulation of mash temperatures and pH to increase unfermentable longer-chain sugars resulting in body without sweetness, yeast selection, and a grain bill focusing on richer flavors. Coupled with precise, research-backed dry-hop adjustments to maximize the juicier aromatics without overloading the smaller body can result in a shockingly delectable “Hazy IPA” at just 2.9%. This is an area Nick sees a unique competitive advantage over local and even regional breweries, where these types of beer are extremely rare due to the significant effort in refining the process & recipe to find the sweet spot between cloyingly sweet to thin and watery; commercial examples these styles often end up too far on one of these extremes.

Thiolized Pale Ales

One of the more interesting innovations in the brewing industry is an improved understanding of the way thiols (one of the aromatic and flavorful compounds found in hops) are unlocked and released in the brewing process. Newly created engineered yeast strains can unlock bound thiols in specific hop varieties resulting in massive waves of passionfruit and guava in the finished beer. The trick however is to ensure that these notes do not create a one-dimensional profile, and are balanced by a sweeter, richer base pale ale recipe alongside copious dry-hop charges to supplement the yeast-derived thiols without being overshadowed.