When Westbrook, Maine’s Mast Landing released its Gunner’s Daughter peanut butter stout in 2016, the brewery didn’t expect it to become a top-selling item. But the stout became a fan favorite and eventually took over 50% of the brewery’s production.
Now, after another year of more than 40% production growth, Mast Landing is trying to show off what else it has to offer.
The brewery has been focused on “slow, controlled growth,” with its products now available in 17 states (mostly along the East Coast), as well as China and the United Kingdom, according to Gene Buonaccorsi, director of marketing. The brewery plans to expand into 12 more states by the end of 2022, including Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, and California.
“Mast Landing is very community-oriented,” Buonaccorsi told Brewbound. “We are obviously selling beer in these places, but a lot of it is driven by not just where can we sell beer, but where’s a place where we want to get to know people and spend more time there and get to experience that space.”
The brewery’s growth is made possible in part by the addition at the end of 2019 of a 20,000 sq. ft. production facility in Westbrook. The facility features a 30-barrel brewing system, including eight 60-barrel fermenters and three 20-barrel fermenters, along with several smaller systems. Eight additional tanks will be added soon, but those were delayed due to the pandemic.
“When we first moved in it seemed so huge, we’d never fill [the new facility] out,” Parker Olen, Mast Landing co-owner and VP of brand strategy, told Brewbound. “Now, we’re running out of room.”
Through its various expansions, Mast Landing expanded its production to 8,977 barrels of beer in 2020, up 46% from the year before, according to the Brewers Association (BA), a national trade group representing the country’s small and independent brewers. Olen said the brewery is on track to produce 11,000 barrels this year.
“A lot of that is organic growth and not forced growth. You see that a lot with not just breweries, but other companies, where you are ahead of the demand or miscalculate the demand,” Olen said. “In some areas, we are catching up, and I’d rather be catching up than having too much.”
Along with increasing production, Mast Landing is diversifying its portfolio of offerings.
While the brewery’s sales have been driven by IPAs and double IPAs — as well as Gunner’s Daughter peanut butter stout, which now makes up about a third of the brewery’s production — the brewery is shifting focus to kolschs, lagers, and fruited sours.
“We’re really excited about exploring other styles where we’ve been IPA- or pale ale-heavy,” Buonaccorsi said. “We’re expanding the conception of what Mast Landing beer is with all these new inputs. It’s going to be cool to see how that develops.”
Part of this innovation is the brewery’s “All the Way Up” series, which features a rotating line-up of fruited sour ales. Its typically low ABV sours have been the go-to for attracting hard seltzer fans, according to Olen.
This week, the brewery is releasing Solidus, a Scottish ale. Additionally, the brewery is relaunching its Certain Things pilsner, a 4.8% ABV brew originally released last summer, as Buonaccorsi said the brewery extends the longevity of some of its lager brands.
Consumers can order 16 oz. 4-packs of the latest releases for pick-up directly from either of the brewery’s two Maine taprooms, or can find new products across its various distribution networks. Some of the currently delayed tank additions will be part of a pilot program at Mast Landing’s new taproom, and will allow for further long-term experimentation with mixed fermentation and barrel-aged stouts — including a highly anticipated new batch of barrel-aged Imperial Gunner’s Daughter.
“I think the best way to describe [our brand] is accessibility,” Buonaccorsi said. “In our beer lineup, we make a wide array of beers so if you’re a hardocre beer geek, there’s tons to explore, but if you’re super new to beer, you’re gonna find something that you’ll like.
“It expands to our staff and our relationship with our customers in the tasting room and people in the sales market, where we try to be knowledgeable but not pretentious,” he added.
Mast Landing is also expanding its physical presence. In early July, it opened its long-awaited taproom in Freeport, Maine — home to the “Mast Landing” neighborhood.
“It was this unspoken rumor that Mast Landing was opening in Freeport for the past four years,” Olen said. “We knew [the taproom] would happen at some point, but it took a little bit longer than we hoped.”
Mast Landing’s co-founder and president Ian Dorsey grew up in Freeport, and initially started the brand in his home’s garage. While his original intent was to have a brewery in Mast Landing, the company started with a budget of around $2,000, which priced it out of the commercial real estate in the area. The brewery later explored creating a second taproom several times, but didn’t find a location that was the right fit until recently. It was scheduled to break ground on the project in March 2020, but had to delay a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The brewery was able to avoid most other pandemic-related delays due in part to its existing distribution network, according to Olen.
“There’s risk connected to what we’re doing, but we found a lot of success in different ways that we thought, especially in distribution,” he added.
“Prior to the pandemic, we were already very well set up for distribution, so we’ve never been the type of brewery that separates things off for just on-site or makes it hard to get our beer,” Buonaccorsi said. “We like to get as much beer as possible to places, so once tasting room sales became a challenge with COVID, we already have these channels of distribution set up.”
Olen said Mast Landing had about an even 50-50 balance between its on-premise and off-premise distribution before COVID-19. While the brewery shifted to focus on off-premise over the past 18 months, he said the balance is “leveling out again,” as it expands its presence in restaurants and bars in unison with expanding distribution into new state markets.
The brewery has expanded its sales force, particularly in states nearby to its home state of Maine. It recently added a second sales representative to cover a territory that includes Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
After Maine, Olen said Massachusetts — where Mast Landing distributes through Night Shift Distributing — is the best performing state for the brewery, followed closely by its other New England states (Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island) and New York.
Olen compared the distribution balance to walking a fine line, where Mast Landing has created a hybrid strategy between focusing on on- and off-premise.
“We do have these beers that are sought-after, like our barrel-aged Imperial Gunner’s Daughter or some of our double IPAs or our collaboration beers that are only available at the tasting room sometimes, but we also are readily available in pretty much every beer store in New England,” he said. “So it’s kind of like walking that fine line.
“And it seems to be working. It’s helped fuel our growth organically, where there is demand on both ends, but you still don’t have to wait in line for an hour or two to be able to have our beer, you can walk down the street. And that’s just as important to us,” he added.