Despite this column’s name, “Microbreweries You’ve Never Heard Of,” you might have heard of this one. That’s because Bar Harbor Brewing, or “Bah Haaabah” as they say in Maine, is smack dab in the middle of one of the Northeast’s biggest tourist attractions: Acadia National Park.

Every year about four million vacationers drive by the brewery, and about 90 percent of them do so during the June-through-November tourist season. The rest of the year Bar Harbor does everything but shut down and disappear off the map.

Owners Suzi and Tod Foster are two very hospitable, cock-eyed optimists making beer in their basement and making a living at it. They started with an initial investment of $20,000. They’re not getting rich, but they don’t want to. Suzi and Tod sincerely believe small is beautiful. They will never be Ben and Jerry, who went from a garage operation to managing a multimillion-dollar corporation. “We’re definitely not executive types, if you know what I mean,” says Suzi. Even though the orders for their beer were piling up and beer-of-the-month clubs were pounding on their door, Tod took off six weeks last winter to relax and take a break from brewing.

The Fosters receive “brew pilgrims” with open arms. “Brew pilgrims” are the tourists who visit their brewery. They’ll see a station wagon filled with Mom, Dad, the kids, and the dog go whizzing by their sign. Suddenly, the brake lights come on and the car hits reverse. Then the whole family piles out of the car (Dad has a special twinkle in his eye).

The Fosters are well prepared for this daily occurrence. They have a hospitality log cabin in back where they sell beer and merchandise to go and a porch where visitors can rock in chairs, sample the brews, and talk about beer and brewing. In front of the porch is Alewife Pond, where the kids can play among the cattails and hunt for frogs. For those who really want to spend time at the brewery or in the park, the Fosters have an efficiency apartment to rent by the week, right upstairs from the brewery. What a splendid place to use as your brew vacation headquarters!

Although Tod’s brewery is tiny (he mashes only two barrels at a time), it is a national trendsetter. Since its opening in 1990 it has been the first cottage brewery to succeed and remain successful at the cottage level. Many others that started at less than seven barrels have enlarged their facilities and increased production.

Brewing comes naturally to Tod. He remembers helping his dad homebrew when he was only seven. Years later, two very good things happened to Tod. First, he took up homebrewing while at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and second, he met Suzi Murphy, a Bar Harbor native. After college he worked on a career as a fisheries biologist in a federally funded project to protect dolphins in Southern California. When funding for the project dwindled, Tod and Suzi moved to Bar Harbor where she worked as a waitress and he tried his hand as a scallop fisherman. After one winter spent diving in 32° F water, Tod turned in his wet suit for a paint brush and began painting houses.

In the mid-’80s Tod renewed his interest in homebrewing. Soon, he heard about the craft-brewing movement and visited D. L. Geary Microbrewery and Gritty McDuff’s brewpub in Portland, Maine. The idea of opening his own brewery began to ferment in his mind. The advice they received was to forget about the whole thing if they couldn’t come up with a minimum of $350,000.

But a few years later Tod saw an ad in a homebrewing magazine for a two-barrel commercial brewing system. He called the number. Pierre Rajotte, of Montreal, answered. Sure, he could get them started with their own malt-extract brewery for under $20,000. “Farewell house painting and waitressing — brewing, here we come!”

Before purchasing the system, they decided to test their market on an even smaller scale. Tod bought a 15-gallon brewpot and constructed a 160-square-foot brewery in their cellar. Tod had been fermenting in five-gallon plastic buckets, so he reasoned he could just buy 25 more buckets and ferment upstairs in the couple’s
bedroom. Suzi still remembers the mornings she would wake up to the pleasant gurgling and bubbling of the fermenting beer.

Tod and Suzi decided to name their brewery after the town, because the name Foster was already associated with Foster’s Ale from Australia. Their first beer was “Thunder Hole Ale,” named after an Acadia National Park landmark. Later they suffered what they call “the Bass Ale fiasco.” They planned to name their new ale Bass Harbor Light, after another local landmark. While the first batch was still fermenting, they received a phone call from a New York law firm and the gist was if they used the word “Bass” they would find themselves in court. The beer was released as Harbor Light.

Tod and Suzi kegged Thunder Hole Ale in five-gallon Cornelius kegs and began selling it in a bar in downtown Bar Harbor. It was a tremendous hit, and within a few days it was completely gone. For the rest of the summer it was all Tod could do to keep his one account supplied.

In February 1991 they purchased the two-barrel brew kettle and six two-barrel fermenters and expanded the brewery in their cellar. Tod skipped the mashing stage, making the beer with Munton & Fison malt extract, with specialty grains added.

As distribution spread, Tod and Suzi were able to quit their other jobs. They moved out of Bar Harbor proper to their current location near the village of Otter Creek, surrounded by Acadia National Park. In April 1993 they switched from a kegging operation to a bottling operation only. Both the move and the packaging change slowed things down, but they recovered and now sell 30 percent of their ales directly from the brewery to the customer.

The year after they moved, they purchased a four-barrel kettle, converting the original two-barrel kettle into a mash tun. Tod alternates between malt extract and all-grain brewing. One day he makes a four-barrel batch that is mashed and boiled. The next day he skips the mashing stage and makes a batch using pre-ground malt extract. The batches are then blended in stainless steel closed fermenters. Pelletized hops are used exclusively. The ales are unfiltered and bottle conditioned in 22-ounce bottles. The bottles are primed with a small amount of corn sugar and then hand bottled.

Currently they make Thunder Hole Ale (final gravity 1.048), an American brown ale, and Cadillac Mountain Stout (1.070), an export stout. Last year Tod introduced Harbor Lighthouse, a mild ale (1.032). They also use this as a base for two other products: a ginger beer and a peach beer.

The Fosters are familiar with both extract and all-grain brewing and don’t favor one method. “I think malt extract got a bad rap because people were using it as a shortcut,” said Suzi. Tod added, “We’ve found that for draft beer you really need to go all-grain. You get better, grainy flavors from the mash. With the bottle-conditioned beer, you can get away with malt extract because there is so much yeast character in the beer — it just keeps evolving in the bottle.”

The couple is happy about being professional brewers. “We’re really glad that we started when we did,” said Suzi. “I think being the first was really helpful. It’s harder to start a brewery these days. The competition is really amazing. When we first started, we would approach a store or restaurant — actually more than likely, they would approach us. They would say, ‘Oh, yeah. Definitely. We will take your product.’ Now they are much more selective, and will pick and choose. A lot of the owners will roll their eyes when you come in the door because they’ve had 30 different microbrews introduced to them during the last week.”

If you are ever in Bar Harbor, stop by the brewery for a visit at Route 3, Otter Creek Road, a few miles south of the downtown. Tours and tastings are available in July and August, Monday through Friday from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., and in June, September, and October on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On weekends and during the off-season, call (207) 288-4592 to make an appointment. Or drop by — if they’re not busy, they’ll be happy to show you the brewery.
   
Steve Johnson lives in Clemson, S.C., and is author of three brewery guidebooks: On Tap: a Field Guide to North American Brewpubs and Craft Breweries, On Tap New England, and On Tap Northern California.