New Brewery in Home Stretch

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In late May the proprietors of the Broad Brook Brewery hung a big banner in front of the long-delayed construction project on South Street, announcing BROAD BROOK BREWERY COMING SOON. The foundation, steel framework, and exterior sheathing had been largely completed by April 2018, when the stop-work order was issued. As the Observer reported in May 2019, work resumed after a year’s delay.

Arguments about how to satisfy questions about the foundation’s stability had been settled with a plan including exterior backfill with expanded polystyrene foam to reduce earth pressure on the foundation walls, along with exterior buttresses.

In the first week of June, many large slabs of the designated foam, one foot thick by four feet wide and up to ten feet long, were carefully stacked up along about 100 feet of foundation wall, with a total thickness of four feet. After the four exterior buttresses have been attached to the foundation with rebar and concrete, fill and paving was to be added over the foam. 

Following the construction stoppage, proprietor Eric Mance has been keeping the brewery’s followers up to date via social media, tweeting about evolving brews being made to his specifications by a “great local brewery” (in Branford) and reporting construction progress in Suffield. He recently posted “We look forward to everyone enjoying a few beers in the new tap room or on the deck watching the planes go by.” 

Mance and fellow proprietor Tom Rossing have been investing sweat equity in the ongoing construction to hasten the project along. From their comments in early June, it seemed likely that the fermentation vats and other parts of the equipment will have been installed by the end of June and in operation in September. 

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