Photos by Michael Piazza

Like many stories about Tree House Brewing Company, this one begins with the line. Among fans of the Charlton brewery (and there are many), waiting in line to buy the latest release is part of the appeal. Tree House enthusiasts get updates on the line in real time via a Twitter account and a dedicated Facebook group. Fans bring their babies, dogs and parents to wait in line. They snap selfies standing next to dollies stacked high with brightly colored cans. Friendships are made and plans hatched to trade limited-release beers. Sometimes when there is no line, people can be disappointed.

On a late summer Friday afternoon when I plan to visit, a check of the Tree House Line Update Facebook group shows that the line has reached the second light pole in the parking lot. That’s not bad for the start of a summer weekend— about an hour’s wait.

“I love it when I’m in line and someone behind me or in front of me is there for the first time. I love it. Especially when someone is from far out of state,” says Tim Derouin of Monson, a moderator for the Facebook group that currently has about 36,000 members and grows by about 1,000 each month. “They can be like deer in the headlights, but they’re excited. I remember my first time there. I was excited.” The Facebook group is run by Tree House devotees, and has little interaction with the company. Eric Clark of Glastonbury, Connecticut, who is an administrator for the group, likens it to the mapping app Waze for Tree House fans—all the data comes from users and it’s designed to help others in the community.

Devotion to Tree House extends well beyond social media. The brewery and its beers routinely show up on national “best of”‘ lists of all kinds. Co-founder and head brewer Nate Lanier attributes Tree House’s popularity to a unique flavor profile that he thinks distinguishes it from other New England–style IPAs, a style of hazy, smooth beers that have taken the craft beer world by storm. Lanier’s not a fan of the term. “I’m trying to make a beer that has a ton of flavor that doesn’t wear your palate down, and that’s really hard to do,” Lanier says. He explains that notes of honeydew melon are “the meme” that people use to describe the Tree House flavor profile. Terms like juicy and Creamsicle also come up. “We think about how the beer sits on our tongue, how it feels on our palate. Is it abrasive? Is it harsh? Is it overly hopped? Is it too acidic? Is it too carbonated? I think that we’ve just managed to carve out a little niche for ourselves where we have beers that are super aromatic and flavorful, but they’re not crossing into that threshold of being hard to drink after the first several ounces,” Lanier says.

On my afternoon visit, the 450-space parking lot is near capacity. About half the license plates I see are from Massachusetts and Connecticut, not surprising since Tree House is located near the interchange of I-84 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. The remainder are from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Maine and farther afield. With almost 500,000 visitors a year, Tree House is one of the most visited breweries in the country.

Trying to conceal any deer-in-headlights look on my part while I contemplate joining the line, I strike up a conversation in the taproom with Kirsten Misiunas and her son, Jack, of Morris Plains, New Jersey. Both are line veterans and explain how things work. Pointing out her husband, John, who is still outside, Kirsten says he is about 20 minutes away from purchasing his beer. (When I check back 40 minutes later, he’s still not quite at the front of the line.)

A few feet from where we talk at one of the taproom’s long wooden picnic tables, people pick up tickets that show what’s available for the day and how many cans they can purchase of each variety. They mark their order and make their way through a line that snakes slowly between the taproom and a shop selling Tree House branded merchandise. The line continues around the corner, past the brewing tanks and eventually ends at the back of the building. There, patrons present the ticket to one of the 12 to 30 cashiers (the number depends on the size of the crowd) who run to fill the orders from stacks of cans in cases. Purchases get carried or wheeled to waiting cars (there is no consuming on premises, other than when the taproom is open.)

Daily limits for regular Tree House offerings like Julius, Doppelganger and Haze may be 24 cans per person, while special releases could be just six or fewer. “It’s all supply and demand. The harder it is to get, the more people want it,” Kirsten says. This afternoon, the Misiunas family is making a Tree House stop on the way to their annual vacation in Maine, but John and Jack sometimes drive up from New Jersey for the day. “Three hours up, three hours back,” John says.

For Laura Dalrymple of East Walpole, the time investment has to be quite a bit less for her to make the trek. Dalrymple describes herself as a “fan,” rather than “super fan.” She stops at Tree House when she and her family visit her in-laws who live about 10 minutes away. “My husband doesn’t like the line culture, he thinks it’s ridiculous. I usually wait until the end of the day. I’ll check the Facebook group and if it says 30 minutes I’ll say ‘OK, I can do 30 minutes.’ I can physically carry two cases to my car so that’s what I do.”

When the brewery began, operating in much humbler digs in Brimfield in 2012, line culture wasn’t much on the minds of Lanier or his co-founders Damien Goudreau and Dean Rohan. According to Lanier, “It’s kind of been this crazy effect where we opened our doors seven years ago, had five customers show up the first day and that number’s been multiplying basically ever since. We’ve just been trying to stay ahead of that curve, trying to make the best beer that we can and supply a reasonable amount of it to people who show up to the brewery.”

Lanier says that the brewery started out much smaller than is recommended for a commercial enterprise. “We began brewing five and 10 gallons of beer at a time, myself in my kitchen, and then moved into my co-founder Damien’s barn, where we resided for two, two and a half years. I brewed almost 600 batches in six months, which was one of the darker times of my life. But it got us off the ground.”

Eventually, Tree House upgraded to a five-barrel brewhouse, also in Brimfield. When they moved to a 10,000-square-foot facility in Monson with a 30-barrel brewhouse, things began to change for the company. “Once we flipped the switch on the larger brewery and started canning our beers, it all went haywire. In a good way,” Lanier says. In July of 2017, Tree House moved to its third home, a $2.5 million brewery and retail setup off Route 20 in Charlton. Since moving to Charlton, production has continued to skyrocket: 20,000 barrels in 2017, 45,000 in 2018 and a projected 60,000 barrels in 2019. “I think to get to where we are now as quickly as we have, we’ve had wild ambition and a work ethic that would make some people nauseous,” Lanier says.

The sleek but rustic Charlton building, nestled into 75 rolling acres, is a quiet spot for the Tree House community to gather and the brewers to work. Rows of Adirondack chairs line the hillside across from the wooden brewhouse. On-site food trucks sell barbecue and cupcakes to waiting families. When the line is moving and things are less busy (Monday and Tuesday evenings are “super mellow” according to Lanier), beer is poured at the taproom.

“When I drive under the sign, I still get butterflies. It’s, like, ‘This is cool. I’m entering a place that’s removed from the world,’” Lanier says. But even before fully settling into the new site, he had to pull his co-founders in and tell them, “We didn’t make it big enough.” Tree House is now expanding the Charlton retail shop by 12,000 square feet and is breaking ground on a 75,000-square-foot warehouse expansion. They also recently purchased a farm in Woodstock, Connecticut, which is dubbed the Tree House Orchard and Farm Fermentory. Lanier sees each of these additions as ways of reaching out the tentacles of Tree House and creating more spaces for people to enjoy the beer and the community. “We have founding principles that we have painted on our wall that all of our men and women look at when they walk through the door each day, myself included. So, each decision that we make, where we put our focus on a daily basis all goes back to being able to make the best beer we possibly can and serve it in the best environment.”

If Tree House fans and super fans are to be believed, they’re succeeding. Facebook administrator Clark says he’s met a lot of good people through their shared appreciation of the Tree House beers and experience. “There are other breweries that create that same kind of buzz and attention, but I think that Tree House is on a whole other level,” Clark notes. “But when we’re posting updates seven days a week and there’s a line at opening almost every day, that’s something.”

treehousebrew.com

This story appeared in the Fall 2019 issue.