Move over Martha, there’s a new gal in town: Bad Martha, a new craft beer company. The company is premiering two beers this month in Island package stores and restaurants, a summer ale and an extra special pale ale. Beer will be available for tasting at the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust annual Taste of the Vineyard Stroll on Thursday night.
Move over Martha, there’s a new gal in town: Bad Martha, a new craft beer company. The company is premiering two beers this month in Island package stores and restaurants, a summer ale and an extra special pale ale. Beer will be available for tasting at the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust annual Taste of the Vineyard Stroll on Thursday night.
Brewmaster Jared Rouben said he designed the beers to reflect the “treasure chest” of food available on the Island. Pairing with seafood was the focus for the summer ale.
“The aromatics from the hops we use get that lemon characteristic, it’s a natural pairing for fresh fish,” he said. “When I designed it I envisioned all that fresh seafood and for me that was a perfect pairing.”
For the Martha’s Vineyard Ale, the ESP, Mr. Rouben designed a fuller-bodied beer to go with steaks, chops and backyard grilling.
“When I thought of the Vineyard, not only would we want something we could consume everyday but something with a little bit of body, some dried fruit aromatics like apricot and English malt tones. If you were grilling a burger or a steak, that was the beer for me.”
And there’s a special local ingredient — Vineyard grape leaves.
“We explored beach plums and a couple of other things but we thought...it was part of the history here and we wanted to incorporate that,” said Mr. Rouben, previously a brewmaster at Goose Island in Chicago.
Bad Martha was founded by longtime summer resident Jonathan Blum and Island real estate developer Peter Rosbeck. Mr. Blum, who is an executive at Yum Foods, said he has had a longtime passion for beer and wanted to match this with a socially responsible business model. The first 10 per cent of all beer profits will be donated to a hunger-related cause in the area where the beer is sold. On the Island, money will go towards the Island Food Pantry.
“We feel that it’s important to give back to the community first,” he said. “It all goes back to our slogan — get bad, do good.”
With social responsibility comes an element of fun, too, Mr. Blum said. There’s a legend behind the story of Bad Martha. The year was 1602 and Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold had landed on Martha’s Vineyard. He searched far and wide on the tiny island for ingredients to brew ale for his crew. Coming up empty handed, he fell asleep on the shores. A mermaid then appeared and led him to what would become his secret ingredient, grape leaves, and a beer was born.
“It’s a purely fictitious part of the lore of the brand and we’re trying to have a little fun with it,” Mr. Blum said.
The beer is being brewed in Ipswich and is available on the Vineyard this summer, with plans to expand across the Northeast and later nationally. Mr. Blum said he hopes to have a retail space in the future, possibly in Edgartown with a tasting room and products available for sale.
But for now the company is focusing on the two beers, with seasonal beers in the works.
“Our first focus is on the Island, that’s what makes this product so special,” Mr. Rouben said. “We want to make sure every beer pours perfectly and we’ll grow from there.”
Comments
The real story of Bartholomew
Farmer5 chilmarkThe real story of Bartholomew Gosnold is far more interesting than this latest 'Island' product produced in Ipswich.
Gosnold ran out of ale aboad his ship and actually planted barley either on Martha's Vineyard or Cuttyhunk with the expressed purpose of brewing beer. Hops were also planted by either Gosnold or the early settlers and some vines still exist up-Island and produce hops to this day.
Grape leaves as an ingredient??
I think I'll stick with the Island's only real brewery located in O.B.
DITTO, This remind me of when
John Gault Oak BluffsDITTO, This remind me of when Oprah Winfrey purchased the novel about INK WELL beach and Cottage city and then had the movie made in North Carolina. I didn't work then and this will not work now once the novelty wears off. Vineyard grape leaves from the Vineyard, I wonder where they are picking them from?
Dear Farmer5,
Jonathan Blum Martha's VineyardDear Farmer5,
Thanks for your comment. We actually looked into building a brewery on the island; however, we learned several things. First, it would damage the fragile ecosystem of the island by drawing a significant amount of water from our aquifer, and secondly, a large scale brewery would be placing too much wastage into our system. We simply couldn't find a way to be environmentally friendly and brew a product on-island that we hope to take national. It just didn't make sense. So while it's much more expensive to brew the product off island and bring it back here, we decided that was the most responsible thing to do in the short-run, while we continue to explore options here. If we can find an option that works without damaging our fragile ecosystem, we'll definitely explore that. We want to work with local farmers to include locally grown hops and barley from MV into our brew. We're currently using MV grape leaves. If you currently farm hops or barley, or have interest in doing so, please contact me. In the meantime, we do support the island with our profits being donated to local hunger relief, and we hope you will try a Bad Martha at one of the many establishments carrying it today. It's delicious! Thanks again for your comments. Sincerely, Jonathan Blum
Good piece Remy...
Biff McGilpin Wallingford, CT 06492Good piece Remy...
As someone who graduated from
Quinn Gardner Sacramento, CAAs someone who graduated from MVRHS, whose family still lives and runs a business on-island and who has worked in the craft brewing business for almost a decade, I am shocked and disgusted by some of the responses left here so far. Do any of you have any idea just what it takes to operate a brewery? Until you've walked a mile in his rubber boots, loaded a grist mill, shoveled out a mash tun, dealt with a stuck batch or gone through the headache of packaging - you really have no right to criticize.
Put it this way, if Mr. Blum and his crew are lucky, they MAY produce 1,000 barrels of beer in their first year of operation. That's 31,000 gallons of beer. On average, most breweries use almost 5 gallons of water for every one gallon of beer they produce - that means they would have to use 155,000 gallons of water to get there. Not to mention the amount of effluent a brewery can produce and the amount of power a decent sized brewery requires. ALL of which are things our Island has battled with over the years (don't believe him/me? Try going to a Town Council or Public Works Commission meeting sometime).
Then look at what the cost of shipping ingredients to the Island and shipping the finished product off the Island will cost. I can hear it now "Well, only use ingredients grown on the Island," right? It doesn't work that way. Even if he had a 10 acre plot of nothing but hops on the island, with even 70% yield (which is very high, especially in the Island's climate) that MIGHT cover what he would need to get to 750 barrels of annual production. So they would absolutely have to ship ingredients from off-Island (not to mention packaging materials). Doing so for a start-up would in no way be cost effective. He would almost HAVE to run some production off-Island in order to become the regional player it sounds like they hope to become.
As the article mentions, once Mr. Blum and his team get on their feet, they are going to open a taproom on the Island (and I would assume a smaller, pilot brewhouse system there on which they COULD produce small batch, limited release beers there on the Island to be sought after). Once that taproom opens, it will create jobs, tax increment and add to tourism on the Island. All of which helps all of us who call the Vineyard home and contributes to our local economy (and that's not even talking about the philanthropical aspect of their sales that these guys have offered - which aims to support an extremely worthwhile Island Charity that needs all the help it can get in feeding hundreds of Islanders). They didn't HAVE to do that, people - they CHOSE to. Hats off to them for that.
As for this brewery versus Offshore Ales - they make incredible beers! And while I don't know him personally, I know Mr. Blum would agree. However what you nay-sayers fail to understand is that these two breweries would not be adversaries - they would be allies. In the Craft Brewing Industry, we are a community. We support each other. We cheer when another brewery opens and are crushed when one closes, because in our business (and the explosive growth of craft brewing over the last decade stands testament to this), rising tides truly do lift all boats. So this would HELP Offshore Ales and would actually bring more people to the Island to try BOTH breweries.
Understand this - every bottle of locally produced beer (and "locally" includes Ipswich) that's sold equals one less bottle of beer sold by the big three megabreweries in this country. Multinational, mass-produced, mass-marketed, multimillion dollar corporations owned by companies in Belgium and Africa (What? Still think Bud, Miller and Coors are American owned companies? Look it up ... you're in for a rude awakening). Craft Beer supports our local economy and puts local people to work. Period.
Instead of cutting the guy off at the knees before you've ever cracked a single bottle of their beers, give the guy a chance. Rome wasn't built in a day. Applaud these guys for opening a business in the aftermath of the second greatest economic crisis this Nation has ever faced, when thousands of businesses, dozens of which on-Island, have closed and are closing their doors. Buy their beers. Recommend them to friends. Help support their efforts.
Finally, I want to say how impressed I was that Mr. Blum responded directly to the detractors who commented before him and the respect I have for him in HOW he responded. As I said, I don't know him and this is not my brewery, but I'd be wicked furious if someone flamed my brewery that way, especially having never tried a single drop of our beers. Instead, Mr. Blum was calm, rational, polite and professional. That takes guts, and guts is what it takes to make a business succeed.
Cheers to you, Mr. Blum and cheers to Bad Martha's. Looking forward to having a few next time I come home.
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