Page 22 - BusinessWest September 4, 2023

Food Truck Fridays at Abandoned Building Brewery have become part of the landscape in Easthampton, drawing people from across the region and beyond.
start one in Western Mass.,’” he recalled, noting that the landscape was much different than it is now when it comes to players in the craft-brewing industry within the 413.
Indeed, there were a few established players in the region, but not many, and there was certainly room for more.
“I started doing some research, looking at the different towns,” he recalled. “At the time, I was only visiting a few days at a time, so I didn’t know the area really well. I started visiting more, looking
at more of the area, and trying to figure out what breweries were up here. Back in 2013, there weren’t many — Berkshire Brewing, Lefty’s, Opa Opa was around, Northampton Brewery ... those were the mainstays. The craft-beer explosion hadn’t really taken off here yet.”
Fast-forwarding a little, he said he drafted a business plan and started looking for a location — one that would go with the name
Abandoned Building Brewery. “Luckily, there were a lot of old mill
buildings here in the Valley,” he said, add- ing that his search brought him to Holy- oke, Chicopee, and other communities before settling on space in the Brickyard Mill on Pleasant Street in Easthampton, a former felt factory that had become home to a large recording studio, an electrician, a plumbing business, and a host of other tenants.
The space in question had been vacated by Yankee Plastics several years earlier, he went on, adding that it was well-suited to a brewery operation, need- ing only some cosmetic work, which he undertook almost entirely himself — paint, refinishing the floors, and adjustments for
equipment.
With the space secured, he commenced brewing in early 2014,
focusing on Belgian-style brews, which makes this venture unique in many respects.
“These beers are not extremely popular in the broader craft-beer sense, like IPAs, brown ales, and stouts,” he explained. “But they’re popular enough, and they’re fun beers to make, like our Belgian Saison, which translates to ‘summer.’ It’s a lighter beer; it’s very unique in that the yeast, which is the showcase of the beer, gives it a lot of unique flavors — a lot of pepperiness, a lot of spice. We don’t add any of these things to the beer — it’s all about how you treat the yeast during fermentation.”
Meanwhile, Tarlechi and his growing team have expanded and further renovated the space, building out a larger tasting room several years ago and adding an outdoor beer garden, while also taking full advantage of a municipal project to pave the back park- ing lot. These steps have made the brewery more visible and more accessible.
“Before, it really lived up to its name of being an abandoned
“They were saying, ‘there’s notalotof breweries up here; you should start one in Western Mass.’”
22 SEPTEMBER 4, 2023 << WINERIES & BREWERIES >>
BusinessWest