New Hampshire's Kettlehead Brewing sending first shipment to WNY

After success at June's Rochester Real Beer Expo, Kettlehead is partnering with One Stop Brew Shop to send beers to this region

What started off as a prayer of an email eight months ago is resulting in one of my favorite breweries sending beer to the western New York marker for the first time starting next week.

New Hampshire-based Kettlehead Brewing, known for its incredible hazy India pale ales and other inventive creations, is entering the Rochester region with a drop of cans in partnership with the distribution arm of Greece’s One Stop Brew Shop. The first shipment is scheduled to arrive next week. (Keep an eye out on social media channels for both Kettlehead and One Stop for all the details.)

Kettlehead first poured in our area back at June’s Rochester Real Beer Expo. I randomly sent an email to Kettlehead’s general address earlier this year and asked if they’d like to participate.

I got an enthusiastic response from Kettlehead’s director of sales and distribution, Jim Whedon, and the rest is history. Now, after seeing the response at the Expo, Kettlehead is ready to wade into our waters with its first shipment of beers. (I really can’t take all the credit for the Kettlehead invite, however, because the inspiration came from my friends at the FLX Beer Review page. They insisted I invite Kettlehead.) And if it goes over well (and there’s no reason to believe it won’t), it should become a regular occurrence.

“I tried their beers at the Expo and they were awesome and well received,” One Stop owner James Hilbert said. “We had a lot of people hit us up for specific breweries after the Expo and they were probably the top one people asked for afterwards. We tried some after the Expo and really enjoyed them again. The hops were very popular among us.”

The launch

Sam Morrissette, Kettlehead co-founder/co-owner, said the brewery has a few core brands like its Pulpy family of hazy IPAs. “He’s the juice box character on the can who has kinda taken on a life of his own,” Morrissette noted. “We’re gonna launch with that.”

Kettlehead also plans to send The Agent, its flagship New England-style IPA. And also expect to see Dreamstate, which has become one of the brewery’s most popular double IPAs. Morrissette said they’ll mix in some fun one-off releases and hopes that becomes a consistent part of the planned shipments to Rochester, noting that Kettlehead releases at least one new beer every week.

Demand will dictate how regularly Kettlehead sends beer to Rochester, but Morrissette added, “We’re ready to send beer every week if people need it.”

The beers will be available at One Stop, 2512 Ridgeway Ave. in Greece, and some of its distribution partners. (Again, keep an eye on social media for more information here.) Hilbert noted the transit time from New Hampshire is relatively quick, too. So the hope is that the beers will be canned there and available here within a matter of days. He added that he registered nearly all of Kettlehead’s portfolio in New York state, so that should ease the process considerably.

“We’re very, very excited about it,” Hilbert said. “They’ve been awesome to work with so far, too.”

Whedon said One Stop, with its growing portfolio of exciting craft producers, is an ideal partner.

Why Rochester

Whedon told me in a conversation earlier this year, the brewery makes a lot of its decisions based on intuition and gut feelings. That’s how they ended up in Rochester for the Real Beer Expo and how you’ll soon find Kettlehead beers on local shelves. It sounded like fun, there was an opening on the calendar, and there was a desire to visit a new place.

“We’re super excited to come to Rochester,” Whedon said in our earlier interview. “We hadn’t been in the distro space (sending beer to other markets) until this year. It’s funny, because you reached out and two distributors from New York reached out almost simultaneously. Maybe the stars are aligning, maybe this makes sense. We tend to make decisions based on our gut a lot of the time. For us, it was like sure, let’s spend a weekend in Rochester. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Rochester before, so I’m excited to check it out.

“Any time people get excited about our beer, we’re excited.”

And people got super excited about Kettlehead beers back in June. Among the new-to-our-market breweries pouring, Kettlehead was among the three or four I heard the most about. People definitely enjoyed what they tried.

Brewery co-founder/co-owner Sam Morrissette said the brewery has been selling well in Massachusetts, particularly in the Boston area. It is Kettlehead’s first new market outside of its home state.

“This is what happens when a good brand is recognized and more importantly, people are pushing hard to try to get it somewhere,” Whedon said. “We have the flexibility as a crew to make these kinds of things happen. It’s fun.”

Get to know Kettlehead

Kettlehead opened its original brewpub in Tilton, New Hampshire, in late 2017. “We just found the perfect building and scraped things together to open a brewpub,” said Morrissette, a long-time homebrewer and electrician by trade. “We needed to serve food to be able to give people a pint (due to existing New Hampshire regulations at the time). It had a restaurant vibe. Fast forward, Covid hits and we had to change gears. We started packaging everything.

“And when we came out of Covid, the demand was still there for distribution. We looked at new avenues, because we needed more space for production. We opened our facility in neighboring Franklin in November 2022 and that’s what has led us to launching in New York now.”

Morrissette said the brewery has really developed a following for its New England-style IPAs. But he said its portfolio extends well beyond the hazies.

“Our specialty is definitely New England-style IPAs, but we make a ton of different styles,” Morrissette said. “We like to mix it up and make a ton of different variations. We’re pretty well known for our sours in New Hampshire.”

He said the Expo was just the kick Kettlehead needed to begin further exploring this market. “We had a great time out there and the people were really responsive and eager. We were just excited to showcase what we had. And now the opportunity to bring it to you, we didn’t ever expect to see ourselves here. But now that we are, I’m excited to see where it goes.”

And I really can’t wait to scoop some up next week.