Welcome to Jack’s!
The door hadn’t even closed behind us before the chap behind the counter asked if we wanted to start tasting BEER! Hell yeah, let’s get this going!
There were 6 flavors of BEER available at this time, and they were listed out in the recommended order. I love when beer makers make things easy for me!
We had to take a step back for a minute, as there was a tour exiting from the back area. The chap behind the bar walked over to make sure they were all set, giving me a nice clean shot of the taps, lined up, ready and waiting to dispense BEER!
The delay was very manageable, nothing longer than a minute or two, and our newest (and bestest) friend returned and began pouring and handing out BEER!
As we were marveling over this wonderful liquid (commonly known as BEER!), our new friend explained that the brewery has only been around for one year. Something very impressive; the brewery was started by a guy who used to be one of the head brewers from Sam Adams. Wow, nice! Something else impressive is their products can already be found in a TON of bars and restaurants, all over the state. They’re currently looking to expand further into New England, and things are going great for them.
One of the guys spotted a large poster on the back wall. A local craftsman brewery newspaper was sponsoring a BEER bracket, and there were 128 BEERS in the competition. The highlighted (in red) path on the left side is one of Jack’s offerings, and as you can see, they’re doing quite well. Go Jack, Go!
After we’d run through the samples, we each picked our favorite, got another sample of that, then walked out back for the tour. Well, it’s a small operation, and there were three guys working on a labeling machine, trying to get it to stick the labels to the bottles, rather than to each other. They paused in mid-stream to give us the walkaround and talk about their BEER! It was very cool – one of the fermenting tanks was in high gear, and the exhaust tube (running out and down, submersed in a bucket of water for sanitary (air-tight) reasons) was bubbling something fierce. Sweet! (I didn’t take pics on the tour because I was too intent on taking everything in.)
The brewery currently has 4 vats and 6 fermenters – and, they’ve got 3 more, on the way. They said business is going better than they expected, and they’re working hard to keep up with demand. Yeah, Man – demand for BEER!
They also explained that they use ‘flavor-neutral’ yeast when making their beer, as they prefer to focus on, and pull the flavors out of, the hops and malt. It seems to be a strategy that’s paying off for them.
When the tour was done, we thanked our knowledgeable guide and made our way back out to the front room. Time to buy BEER! I went with the “Smoke & Dagger”…but not just a bottle of it. Well, ok…it was a bottle, but not a 12-ouncer. Nope, I went with a growler! That’s a half-gallon of BEER! Nice!
I asked how long they (the growlers) would be good for, and he said ‘unopened’, they’d be good for about a month, but once opened, they should be finished within 24 hours. Ha, I accept your challenge!
The growlers are filled up right when you ask for it, assuring that it’s as fresh as possible. And even better, they fill the bottle with CO2, first, to remove as much oxygen as possible from the bottle. These guys don’t mess around with BEER!
And then it was time to fill my growler with BEER! Wonderful, cold, refreshing (and tasty!) BEER!
We even got little punch-cards. Each time we buy a growler, our card gets punched. Get enough punches, and you can get cool Jack’s Abby swag.
And there you have it – Jack’s Abby Brewery, tucked out of the way in Framingham. A very bare-bones experience, but it was very fun. And, we got BEER!
(We also went to the British Beer Company from here, and got a lot MORE beer, but that’s a story for another time. Suffice to say that I was dragging this morning…)
Ride Hard, Take Brewery Tours!
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