SKOWHEGAN, Maine — The 15-year-old barn on Bigelow Hill embodies a family’s evolution. Built as a stable to house their horses, it went up in three weeks. Like an old-school barn raising, several family members pitched in.
“I told my husband he had to build me a barn for my horses,” Pam Powers, a former middle school teacher who rode recreationally, said.
“At the height of our craziness, we had seven horses,” said Jeff Powers, her husband, who built the barn with his father.
That was then. Now that barn has a new purpose for the Powers family. For the past year and a half, their backyard barn has housed one of the fastest growing micro breweries in central Maine: Bigelow Brewing Co.
“It’s a unique structure. We tried to keep a lot of its past intact,” Jeff Powers, the company’s head brewer, said. “It’s not just a four-wall brewery. A barn lends well to comfort.”
A homebrewer since 1989, Jeff Powers always knew he would open a brewery. When the horses, which his daughter Jordan also rode in high school, were sold, the barn suffered empty nest syndrome. It was idle and ready for its next act. So were its owners.
“For nine years you had to get up every single morning [and tend to the horses],” Jeff Powers said. “They are a lot of work for the 10 percent pleasure you get.”
Converting the space into a brewery took much longer than building the barn — by a few years.
The results are stunning. On sandy floors where horses sheltered, a concrete floor and new red metal walls house the brewing area.
The shiny system — a fermentor, a kettle and a liquor tank — are the new stall mates.
The doors could have been removed, but “I wanted it to be rustic and mixed industrial,” Pam Powers, who hung a harness from one of her horses nearby, said. “It evolved to what it is.”
Overhead, a series of new windows provide needed natural light. Across the way, a smooth granite bar divides the tasting room from the center aisle. Drop lighting and ceiling fans give the brewery a polished glow.
From the road it looks like just another farmhouse brewery, but once you pull in and see the water fountain made of kegs and wood-fired oven — all new additions — you know it’s worth the trip.
“We have to be a destination brewery because we are kind of out of the way,” Jeff Powers, who is proud of his transformation on 25 acres, said.
Five beers on tap, from a double IPA to a brown ale to the popular chocolate chili stout, can be sampled and purchased in growlers to go.
Pam Powers, who has knack for interior design, added a gas fireplace in the tasting room, formerly a tack room, and went to town on the bathroom. The pine palace, with a creative sink inlay, is not to be missed.
“We wanted a place where people come and feel welcome and keep coming back,” Pam Powers said.
Their next phase includes an addition to the barn to graduate from a three-barrel system to 15.
When they opened in the spring of 2014, the tasting room would see 20 people per night. This summer, 70 guests sipping fresh brew in the barn is not unusual.
“We can’t make enough beer,” said Pam Powers, whose daughter, Jordan, 25, is a key part of the business.
“We’ve been at capacity since we opened,” Jeff Powers said. “We need to produce more beer. We are turning people down.”
This newcomer to the beer industry couldn’t be more pleased with what the former horse barn has become.
“We are still using grain,” Jeff Powers said. “But for a better purpose now.”
