Do What’s Right — Maine Beer Company in Freeport, Maine
The morning is immortalized on the bottle of Zoe, an Amber Ale made by Maine Beer Company.“Zoe loved it,” the bottle reads.
The impulse to immortalize life’s mundane—but meaningful—moments became a main driver for Dave Kleban and his brother Dan in the early days of Maine Beer Company, headquartered roughly 150 miles southwest from Bar Harbor in Freeport, Maine.
“First, my wife had just spent three years helping me get through law school,” says Kleban.
For us, that meant only making the best beer we could, but, more importantly, we wanted to create a company we could be proud of.
“It was challenging,” Kleban says.
We always stood by the idea that if you make good beer, people will pay for it.
“If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right,” Kleban says of the brothers’ early ethos.
“For us, that meant only making the best beer we could, but, more importantly, we wanted to create a company we could be proud of.
[We thought,] ‘There’s gotta be a better way to do this.’” That focus—the company motto, “Do What’s Right,” is now stamped all over bottles, business cards, and signage—has been a throughline throughout Maine Beer Co’s existence.
East Coasters tried to keep up.“I was looking to create a beer full of fresh American hoppy flavor and aroma but also delicate enough you could have a couple of them and your mouth wasn’t wrecked,” Kleban says.
I wanted to make fresh hoppy beers here in Maine.
Rumors started to trickle out that there was another Maine brewery worth visiting in Portland, and drinkers began to flock to Industrial Way. Then, a new launch drew even more attention: Lunch, the first IPA Kleban brewed outside of a homebrew scale.“People sometimes think that we brewers are […] these geniuses who know which beers we brew are going to be so successful that people are going to flock to them and line up outside of breweries,” he says.
“All of a sudden you had this medium where people could spread the word on your behalf and there were no limitations,” Kleban says.
Every year, Maine Beer Company gives 1% of its annual gross sales to environmental nonprofits.
When Mills took the job, Maine Beer produced a little more than 19,000 barrels annually; this year, it is on track to eclipse 34,000 BBLs. This increased production “equals increased revenue and greater ability to care for our people and nonprofit partners,” says Mills.
“By 2030, all the energy we consume will come from Maine-generated clean energy,” he says.
“It’s not what it costs, it’s what it benefits,” says Mills.
Maine’s minimum wage is $12.75; a former employee confirmed that starting pay at the company was $18 an hour, but the source believed “it has gone up since then.”
The core commitment of Maine Beer Company, though, is to the environment.
Beers like Little Whaleboat, an IPA, bring attention to the series of small islands in Maine’s Casco Bay protected by Maine Coast Heritage Trust; Woods & Waters, another IPA, was brewed to commemorate the establishment of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.One of the causes closest to the brewery’s heart is the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, which is located near the brewery and is bordered by the Harraseeket River and Casco Bay.
“For plenty of people, their entry to Wolfe’s Neck is through that beer,” says Herring.
The company and its employees don’t seem to be apart from the action—they’re a part of it, hopping into kayaks and bikes and visiting the land and animals for which they are advocating.“Maine Beer Company has sought out partnerships with other businesses they admire and want to help,” says Herring.
After a slight pandemic dip from 2019 to 2020, the brewery is back on a “healthy growth trajectory,” says Mills.
We’re just going to keep doing what we do.” The commitment to quality and beer has kept people coming back.
— Steve Mills, Maine Beer Company“In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a shift in consumers trying to put their money into brands, not just beer, that are putting out quality products, but are also authentic and trying to do things the right way,” he says.This isn’t to say success hasn’t come with difficult knots to massage out.
Territory managers across the 32 states (plus D.C.) in which Maine Beer is sold are tasked with assessing how much beer can be what Mills calls “responsibly sold.” Out-of-code beer in distant markets sometimes sits on shelves, and doesn’t showcase the brewery’s best intentions.
“We hit this window of time that was a sweet spot,” says Kleban on Lunch being so available.
“You also weren’t competing with 30 different breweries in a 20-mile radius making American hoppy beers.” Instead of limited-edition drops, the brewery is now prizing the robust and the durable.
Since the program’s inception in 2019, 37 batches of Black Barn beers have hit bottles, and include styles like Maine Special Bitter (#2), Oyster Stout (#20), and Altbier (#36).
“Beers like these are a great addition to our core lineup, and offer something new and exciting for our local fans who want to try something new,” says Paul Aho, a research and development brewer at Maine Beer.
Despite pleas to offer one of its classic, balanced, hop-forward Ales in a smaller packaging (a certain journalist advocated for six-packs of bottles), the brewery’s beers are still only packaged in its traditional 16.9oz bottle format.
Because those pesky extra .9 ounces don’t fit a standard pint glass, the bottle size makes Maine Beer Company’s offerings ideal for sharing, for the ceremony of pouring a beer for someone new.
“There are flaws to any package type, and bottles are part of that,” Mills admits while praising the sustainability of draft beer.
Though both Mills and Kleban reasoned to “never say never” to a packaging shift, it seems there are bigger goals for Maine Beer Company than changing its format.
Namely, remaining committed to the causes that inspired Kleban from the beginning to “create a company that tries to lift people up.” “I think it’s funny when people call us ‘OGs,’ but we’ve been able to stay relevant and make those small gains at times,” Mills says.
Kleban noted that he “won’t be around in 100 years, and doesn’t want to be,” but he hopes Maine Beer Company will be.
“We want this brewery to be around in 100, 200, 300 years,” Kleban says.