Nomadic Grow Brewing takes root in upstate New York

Itinerant brewery with a focus on IPAs and other seasonal creations partners with small businesses for distribution

Note: This newsletter is supported by Donnelly’s Public House, a wonderful canal-side establishment in the village of Fairport.

Garrett Meakin is busy. And he likes it that way.

He brews full time at War Horse Brewing on the Three Brothers Wineries campus in northern Seneca County. And when he’s not in the brewery, he and his wife Alanna are busy taking care of their soon-to-be 1-year-old daughter Luna.

So you might ask where he would find the time and energy to start a new brewery, Grow Brewing Company. Over the past few months, he has balanced work and family as he plants the seeds for this new venture.

“Grow is a nomadic brewing project and the goal is to grow small, local businesses, along with our own,” said Meakin, 31, a Seneca Falls resident, who has brewed at War Horse for the last four years after spending four years at Good Nature Brewing in Hamilton, Chenango County. “We’ve made it a point to only partner with small stores where we went in, met with the owners, and felt like they were going to push our product. We’re trying to build off those relationships.” 

Grow, a true family endeavor, rents tank space at War Horse, where Meakin often works at odd hours to craft beers. It’s not uncommon to find him at War Horse at midnight or on a Saturday or a Sunday (when the brewery tasting room is closed) working on Grow. In the last three months, Meakin has brewed and packaged 11 different beers with the goal of producing three new ones each month. He said there are three more in the tanks right now and labels in process for a bunch more. Meakin would ultimately love to can six beers per month.

Meakin loves hoppy beers, so Grow’s main focus has been on super vibrant and juicy hazy single and double India pale ales. (War Horse won a gold medal the the 2021 New York State Craft Beer Competition in the hazy IPA category.) There have also been some fruited sours and two lagers, including an incredible triple-decocted Czech-style Pilsner called Garden Party.

An assortment of Grow Brewing beers from an earlier drop.

The seeds of Grow

Earlier in the pandemic, Meakin started daydreaming about what it might look like to start something from scratch. What might a new creative outlet look like and what could he do to satisfy some of these brewing urges?

More and more, the Meakins realized a contract partnership with War Horse would allow them to open a new brewery without many of the traditional startup costs like equipment, infrastructure and real estate. (Along with War Horse head brewer Pete Achilles, War Horse has continued its run of quality beers, including a slew of delicious IPAs through its Change series and variants of its Breakfast with Churchill coffee stout.)

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“We started thinking that you don’t need a tasting room to have an impact, to be able to prop people up,” Meakin said. “And Alanna was pregnant at the time, so there was a ‘grow’ aspect going on in our lives. The stars were all aligning at the same time.”

It’s really like a co-packing partnership at its core. The Meakins view the brand as an extension of themselves, from the can label artwork to the beers themselves. And then there is the added layer of the other small businesses they’re partnering with.

“We really view it through a sustainability lens as a small business,” Meakin said. “We want the little guys to get the love.”

Meakin made the pitch to Three Brothers in late 2020 and then spent 2021 working on licensing and an alternating proprietorship agreement. (There’s a similar arrangement between Industrial Arts Brewing in the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn-based Threes Brewing. Threes basically takes over the space and brews many of its bigger batch lagers at the Industrial Arts facility.) He’s appreciative of the support, especially since it allows him to explore new avenues.

“I feel like I have a really good balance with how it’s going,” Meakin said. “It’s a whole different beast. This is an open slate, a clean slate on everything. It’s been fun.”

As soon as the Grow beers are packaged, they’re moved off-site and stored in a walk-in cooler in the garage of Meakin’s dad. His dad also serves as sales manager and makes many of the deliveries. And as the project grows (pun intended) there is potential to rent tank space at other upstate breweries, Meakin said.

Taking root

After canning, Grow distributes all of its own beer to its retail partners in the Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany areas. (Garrett lived in Syracuse for 10 years, while Alanna is from that area.) In just three months, Grow has expanded its reach from 14 initials retailers to nearly 100.

(Currently, Grow’s beers are only available at AJ’s Beer Warehouse and Beers of the World in Henrietta and Steamer’s Basin Trading Co. in Bushnell’s Basin. Though there are ongoing talks to expand in Monroe County.)

Grow hired its first employee, an Albany-based sales representative, to help expand reach and form new retail partnerships.

Generally, the beers are produced in 15-barrel batches. “We’re pretty much sold out of our stock,” Meakin said.

Meakin has been exploring new techniques and ingredients to accentuate his IPAs. He is doing the same with some of Grow’s sours and other offerings, experimenting with new and non-traditional yeast strains.

“There is a little bit of room to do some different stuff,” he said. “It might be juicy, familiar all-Citra, but it’s still gonna be a little bit different of an animal than you might’ve had from another brewery.

He is employing terpenes and monoterpenes in many of his beer. The hop-derived additives are used throughout fermentation similar to something like Phantasm, an extract made from New Zealand-grown Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc grapes that generates intense tropical fruit aromas and flavors. Breweries like Other Half and Aurora have made beers with Phantasm recently.

Think of Phantasm like a flavor enhancer. According to Meakin, terpenes, which are the essential oils in all fruits, vegetables and hops, can have the same impact on hazy beers. Added to the Grow beers, Meakin said it adds an underlying, complementary herbaceous quality. There are innumerable varieties of terpenes and they can be blended as well.

Without giving up his secrets, Meakin said there are endless possibilities.

“We have been working with a few different people to make custom blends,” he said. “So we get a little more boost out of oil content than we would if it were just hop-derived, like pellet hops. I think about what flavors I want to boost and it’s kind of like a puzzle. The really fun part is running it all through fermentation, because all of those enzymes in the yeast are changing some of the components of these oils.”

A flourishing garden community

Meakin said the goal of monthly releases is to encourage people to drink the beers super, super fresh. It’s not like folks can come try the beers on draft in a tasting room.

So they’ve been scheduling tasting events all over the region to introduce people to the brand. “We don’t have a home base, so that’s been one of the biggest challenges with Grow,” Meakin said. Another challenge is the lack of cooler space. The Meakins built an 8-foot by 20-foot walk-in cooler in his dad’s garage, so storage can be tight. (And before you ask, yes, the cooler is legal and bonded, Meakin chuckled.)

But the brewery is only four months old and a lot can change in the future, Meakin said. There have been discussions about establishing a permanent home (while continuing the itinerant brewing relationships). Any Grow storefont or tasting room would probably be in Syracuse.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Meakin admitted. “There’s no overhead with this thing (with renting tank space and not having a taproom). But also, people can’t get the Devil’s Garden (one of Grow’s hoppy beers) right off the rip and have it taste the way we tasted it right off the tank.”

Now that they’ve proven the concept works, there are a number of different directions Grow could grow in the future. Meakin would love to go from three beers to six beers per month. He wants to continue Grow’s relationship with small beer retailers and potentially expand into new partnerships.

Meakin doesn’t envision a traditional brewery tasting room. Instead, he would love to open something similar to a mercantile or marketplace where other small businesses could set up hubs or stalls with Grow Brewing as the anchor. People could then visit a bunch of different shops and enjoy a Grow beer during the trip. It’s a little more of a utopian view of business.

“We would love to help grow everyone,” Meakin said.

Title sponsor: Donnelly’s Public House

This work is made possible through support from Donnelly’s Public House, 1 Water St. in Fairport. So make sure to get out to Fairport and support one of the best establishments in our area.

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