Page 4 - BusinessWest December 9, 2024

Brewing with a Purpose
Pittsfield’s Hot Plate Is Pushing Boundaries
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
[email protected]
Sarah Real and Mike Dell’Aquila spent a lot of time in their cold Brooklyn condo during the pan-
demic thinking about what they want- ed to do for the next chapter in their lives — a “second act,” as they called it — and where they wanted to do it.
At the time, they both had cor- porate jobs, Real as a consumer insights and media research expert, and Dell’Aquila as a creative mar- keter and fiction writer. But starting in the early 2000s, when they were students at Penn State, both of them, and especially Real, developed a
real passion for craft beer that led
to home brewing — and thoughts of making beer their next career.
“I don’t want to brew beer just to brew beer. I want it to have purpose. I want it to be interesting. I want to push boundaries.”
By the way, the condo was cold because the gas had been turned
off due to a code violation, one that forced that home brewing to be con- ducted on a hot plate, a reality that would eventually inspire the name for the venture they would undertake in downtown Pittsfield.
It was there, after much introspec- tion — and research, which revealed, among other things, that there were very few breweries in that area — they decided to embark on a mission to create not just a brewery, but one with a purpose.
A multi-faceted purpose.
“I began thinking, does the world really need another brewery? How are you going to differentiate your- self?” Real recalled. “I don’t want to brew beer just to brew beer. I want it to have purpose. I want it to be inter- esting. I want to push boundaries.”
In many respects, they’re doing all that, while also playing a lead role in the ongoing reimagining and
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Sarah Real and Mike Dell’Aquila