Salem, MA-based brewer is the anchor tenant in the project with AHF and DCR
PRESS RELEASE / October 15, 2019 (Salem MA) – Notch Brewing, the Salem, MA session beer pioneer and lager specialist, will be opening its second brewery-taproom-biergarten at the soon-to-be rehabilitated Charles River Speedway Headquarters site in Brighton during the summer of 2020. Notch will be the anchor tenant of The Speedway, a collaborative development of the Architectural Heritage Foundation (AHF) which preserves historic buildings, structures, and spaces through self-sustaining partnership activations and the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) which protects, promotes, and enhances the state’s natural, cultural, and recreational resources.
Notch will be brewing on-site, offering a wide range of both Notch and Voll Projekt releases for guests to enjoy inside in the beer hall and outside in the year-round biergarten. “If you’ve visited our Salem home, you’ll have a sense of what to expect,” says Chris Lohring, Notch co-founder, “but we’re definitely making space to highlight our new neighbors in Brighton, Allston, Watertown, Newton, and Cambridge and especially directly at The Speedway.”
Lohring shares that the draft options will feature the drinkable yet flavorful session beer Notch has made its signature, brewed onsite on the new seven-barrel brewing system complete with open fermentation, full decoction-mashing and horizontal lagering tanks for extended beer conditioning. “Like the Salem brewery set-up, Brighton’s biergarten will be very much in the German spirit of the idea, not just a name on an outdoor space to drink beer,” Lohring says with reverence to German and Czech traditions.
The same Germanic-inspiration will encourage communal interactions and social drinking just like Notch’s Salem home. The new brewery and taproom will hold upwards of 200 people of the interior space while the biergarten will be roughly twice that size with room to further expand for festivals and special events.
The Speedway also plans to host select food vendors as tenants and Notch-Brighton visitors can bring in the neighbors’ food into the taproom since Notch will not be running a kitchen. This redevelopment project will reinvigorate the National Register-listed Charles River Speedway Headquarters with a full-service restaurant, small-format retail and food purveyors, local artisans and makers, and non-profit and creative office space after nearly twenty years of dormancy.
Aerial image courtesy of the Speedway
“AHF is thrilled to rehabilitate the historic Charles River Speedway buildings into a revitalized destination to eat, drink, shop, and gather,” says AHF President Sean McDonnell. “We’re excited to join with Notch Brewing to create a brewery and taproom along the Charles River, where the community can experience the multifaceted offerings of the Speedway against a backdrop of the site’s fascinating history.”
When asked about his goals for the Brighton project, Lohring casts an optimistic outlook: “We will brew and offer hospitality to the high standard we’ve established but beyond those, we want to share what we’re about with the greater Boston area and welcome them to the session beer life.”
To follow progress on The Speedway project and all things Notch, keep an eye on the brewery’s Facebook and Instagram.
About Notch Brewing: Launched in 2010, Salem, Massachusetts’s Notch Brewing was the first brewing company in the U.S. to focus exclusively on session beer, which only has 4.5% alcohol or less. These lower alcohol styles bring people together for social occasions without the intoxicating effects of some of today’s popular craft beer styles. Notch’s focus on flavorful subtlety, and traditional European brewing practices, as well as the contemporary approaches of American craft beer, has garnered international renown from beer drinkers, industry peers, and the food and drink media. To learn more, please visit Notch’s Salem Tap Room and Brewery or online at notchbrewing.com.
About Architectural Heritage Foundation (AHF): Founded in 1966, the Architectural Heritage Foundation is a not for profit organization dedicated to preserving and reactivating historic properties to stimulate community growth. AHF specializes in advancing stalled preservation projects, helping government agencies, communities, and private sector stakeholders to transform at-risk historic real estate into economic and cultural assets. For more information, please visit ahfboston.com.
About The Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR): The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), an agency of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, oversees 450,000 acres of parks and forests, beaches, bike trails, watersheds, dams, and parkways. Led by Commissioner Leo Roy, the agency’s mission is to protect, promote, and enhance our common wealth of natural, cultural, and recreational resources. To learn more about DCR, its facilities, and its programs, please contact them at mass.parks@state.ma.us or visit mass.gov/dcr.
(Feature Image: A rendering of the lower courtyard of the revitalized Speedway. / Courtesy of the Speedway)
