Hopster's Brew & Boards - Newton

I've been waiting a few weeks to write this post because I wanted the whole process to be finished, so that's why it's so late!

As part of Tom's birthday this year I made us a reservation at Hopster's Brew & Boards over in Newton. I first heard about Hopster's on Kickstarter back in July. I was so excited about the project I became a backer! Hopster's allows people to create their own hand crafted beer for themselves, without making the major monetary and time investment that home brewing requires. The first step is to schedule a time and reserve a kettle. When you show up on the scheduled date, you are paired up with a guide who will walk you through the steps from start to finish.

I scheduled us a kettle on Sunday, March 2, the day before Tom's actual birthday. The system to reserve was very easy to use but I didn't receive any communication before our appointment. I sent an e-mail to confirm that my request was accepted and the manager got back to me immediately, apologizing for the system slacking off (which they are still working on).

I loved Hopster's the moment we walked in! I was a little put off by it's location in Newton, but it is right off the highway and was about a 10-15 minute drive from South Boston. The space is open, airy and the walls are filled with quotes, photos and information about beer. There are a bunch of tables for people to sit at, a big bar serving local craft beers, and a few rows of kettles. The area where you gather the ingredients for your beer is quite small, and could only fit about one group at a time.

We started off by looking through a binder of options and choosing our beer. We went with the "Woods Family Farmhouse Saison", since we are both big fans of Saisons!

Once we chose our beer, it was time to start collecting and measuring our ingredients. Since it was Tom's birthday, I let him do most of the work :)

Wall of grains! Looks like cereal a the dining hall.

Measuring the grain

Steeping the crushed grain in water to start the beer!

Measuring the malt

Weighing the dark candi sugar

Birthday boy mixing everything together!

Once everything was mixed together we had about 45 minutes to spare while it boiled. We decided to order a snack to munch on and some beer. The beer list was fantastic! It changes constantly and there were a bunch of beers I didn't recognize on the list. They do tasting flights for $11, so Tom and I both got ourselves one.

Tom's flight:

My flight:
Convergence - Backlash Beer Company
Spencer Trappist Ale - Spencer Brewery (my fave!)
Tramp Stamp - Clown Shoes
Slumbrew Snow Angel - Somerville Brewing Company

We also shared a delicious soft pretzel that came with an incredible bacon onion jam. The food menu at Hopster's is fairly small -- they offer charcuterie boards, flatbreads, a couple of small plates and a sandwich or two. We weren't that hungry so the pretzel was good for the time being.

Once the boil was finished we headed back to the kettle to mix in Irish moss and Grains of Paradise. I did the mixing this time!

And one picture for the memory box:

The last step was to funnel the beer into a container where it can be stored for the next few weeks. The beer only needs about 2-3 weeks to age before it can be bottled.

When we got home I scheduled a bottling session online for about 3 weeks later. Hopster's allows you to create your own label for the bottles, which I thought was so cool! We got right to work figuring out what our beer should be named and what our label would look like. Since it is a Belgian, we decided to use our photos from Brussels as inspiration. We settled on a gorgeous picture Tom took of the main city square. After we chose the picture, the name seemed obvious: Grote Markt Saison (the name of the square)! We also decided on Bucket List Brewing for our fake company name. Cute huh?

We went back for the bottling session last week, and I was excited we actually got to do all of the bottling ourselves. For some reason I wasn't expecting that and figured we would just watch the staff do the bottling. The whole process took about an hour or so, and we ended up with over 2.5 cases of our beer!

Our beer!

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the beer with our labels on them. While we were there the label machine wasn't working properly and they said they would mail them to us. I have yet to get them, but will definitely post a photo of the final product as soon as I do!

Overall I think it was an awesome experience, and I think Tom had a great time for his birthday. We are both interested in home brewing but don't have the space or money to really invest in the hobby yet. Hopster's is perfect for that in-between experience. I felt ownership over the beer we created, but we didn't have to worry about the very important aspects like sanitizing equipment or keeping the beer at the right temperature. 

I do have to mention that Hopster's is still very new (they just opened in November), so they don't quite have everything perfected yet, as demonstrated by the lack of communication and the labels not being printed. The staff was also a little hard to get a hold of at times, and when the place got really busy the first time around everyone just seemed overwhelmed and stressed. I know with time these kinks will be worked out, and I would definitely still recommend the experience to anyone interested in beer or home brewing!

Hopster's is located at:

292 Centre Street
Newton, MA 02458

Kettles range in price from $150-$300 and can be split with 3-4 people.