Buzz-worthy Mighty Squirrel Brewing starts WNY distro

Fast growing Massachusetts brewery launches in this market with affordably priced flagships

Mighty Squirrel Brewing is the big craft brewery you’ve probably never heard of (or at least that was the camp I fell into before learning more about it in the last few weeks).

The brewery’s Cloud Candy hazy IPA is the top-selling craft beer in Massachusetts. (Again, I had no idea.)

And I get the sense a lot of people are gonna get educated real quick as the Massachusetts brewery launches in the western New York market for the first time over the coming weeks. It’s starting small at a few retail partners (like AJ’s Beer Warehouse in Henrietta) and will gain tons of steam with availability at local Wegmans stores.

It’s a pretty stunning rise for a relatively young craft brewery. After contract brewing for a few years, it opened its massive home in Waltham, Mass., just northwest of Boston. And it is currently constructing a new taproom/beer garden right outside historic Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox baseball club). The Fenway spot will have an indoor capacity of 600 people and operate with a 10-barrel brewhouse.

Co-founders Naveen Pawar and Henry Manice launched Mighty Squirrel in 2015 through various contract brewing agreements and initially focused on protein-packed beers designed to appeal to consumers with active lifestyles (no, seriously). Like a lot of things in life for the Mighty Squirrel pair, that morphed and by the time they opened the Waltham facility, they were devoted to traditional beer styles like New England-style IPAs, fruited sours, and lagers.

New York is Mighty Squirrel’s third new market, following on the heels of its launch in New Hampshire last October. The brewery is primarily known for its simple two-tone labels, its Cloud Candy IPA, and its embrace of community, something that is massively important to the brewery’s identity, Pawar said.

Photo: Naveen Pawar, left, and Henry Manice, center, Mighty Squirrel co-founders, inside their Waltham taproom.

The brewery’s rise is based on a number of factors, Pawar said:

1. The quality of the beer. “The liquid has to be good — how it smells, how it tastes. That’s critical.”

2. Label artwork and brand identity. Mighty Squirrel has always kept it simple and recognizable. Each label features, at most, two or three main colors and simple illustrations. “We believe in the power of simplicity.”

3. The people behind the beer. “People want to see who are the people responsible for the beer, the people behind the brand, especially how much they care about the community, how they treat their employees.”

The acorn

Paveen and Manice, first co-workers at a San Diego-based spinal implant company (they literally joined the same company within a month of each other), became friends in 2010 and often enjoyed beers together after playing tennis.

“He was the first one to welcome me to the company,” Pawar said. “‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go for a beer?’”

And like a lot of life’s best ideas, they found the inspiration for their business after drinking a few beers. Paveen said he and Manice share the same entrepreneurial DNA and wanted to find a way to combine their talents, interests, and hobbies.

“But more than that, we share the same ethos and values,” Pawar said. “So we very soon realized we wanted to work on something together. We did not know what field it was going to be, so we explored some ideas.”

Could it be orthopedics? Could it be clothing? Maybe e-commerce? What about something in the automotive industry?

“It felt like each week we came up with a new idea,” Pawar said.

Being in the fertile brewing landscape of San Diego, they began exploring ways they could enter the market. They also started homebrewing together. “We were inspired by the local brewing scene,” Pawar said. And then they moved back to Boston to be closer to Manice’s family.

The tree

Mighty Squirrel launched in June 2015 and outgrew each of its first three brewing partners — moving production from Vermont, to Massachusetts, and then to Maryland.

Realizing they needed to pivot, Pawar admitted, “The idea for the high protein beers was pretty cool but it didn’t work out. So we thought, let’s try the traditional way.”

In January 2018, the brewery found its mission and its workhorse with the release of Cloud Candy IPA. “Before that point, we were doing 150 or 160 cases a month,” Pawar said. “But from there, every week, every month, we couldn’t keep up.” The Waltham brewery followed in December 2018.

Mighty Squirrel, mostly Cloud Candy, went from 160 cases per month to 25,000 cases per month, Pawar said. The flagship IPA is about 70 percent of the brewery’s total volume. The wild part is that until last fall, Mighty Squirrel was only selling in Massachusetts.

When it opened, the facility had three fermentation tanks. It now has 54, Pawar said. “Every three months, we get three tanks,” Pawar said.

The brewery’s flagships are priced competitively and designed to compete with market heavyweights like Fiddlehead, Sloop, and Big Ditch. I really like Mighty Squirrel’s new Italian Pilsner, Volare.

Will it succeed? Who knows. Mighty Squirrel’s New York distributor partner Remarkable Liquids is especially excited about the potential of the brand.

Pawar admits there are nerves when breaking into a new state, but said they’re so passionate about the quality of the beer and the culture of the brewery, that they’re confident a new market will embrace it.