Medfield brewery looking to expand in MetroWest
Courtesy/Zelus Beer Co.
Geoffrey Pedder, founder and CEO of Zelus Beer Co.
Zelus Beer Co., based in Medfield, is looking to expand to Central Massachusetts. The running-friendly brewery is opening a pop-up taproom in Ashland for two weeks next month, including for the Boston Marathon. Geoffrey Pedder, founder and CEO of the company, told the WBJ that he’s looking to open a taproom in the MetroWest area.
What are you looking to do in Central Massachusetts?
We’d like to open a brewery and a space that’s open to the public, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily want to stop contract brewing. It would be a relatively small system, about five to 10 barrels, which we could then use for selling beer mostly at the location.
Where have you been looking?
I’m not sure where we’re going to expand. I live in Newton, and we’re based in Medfield, so those are the areas I know best, but there’s not a lot of population there.
We’ve been thinking about Ashland for a while, and we’re still interested, but we’re quite open to a lot of different places. We haven’t found location, and we’re still trying to raise money to open one. I don’t want a particularly large taproom, but I do want one somewhere.
Do you have any other areas in mind?
Somewhere along the Boston Marathon route. It only happens once a year, but it’s quite a good marketing opportunity for us. Our brand was founded around running. We don’t only sell to runners, obviously, and there aren’t enough of them, but it is important to have a location on the route.
So what makes your beer runner-friendly?
We have to be a little careful about what we say, and we can’t make health statement in regard to beer, but we adjust our brewing salts. Brewers typically adjust brewing salts and water profiles for many reasons, like to match the water profile of certain historic cities like Dublin. They’ve also done it for brewing efficiency.
We adjust ours using certain salts commonly used, like calcium chloride, to keep the flavor and thickness while offering a beer with a lower alcohol content. We also use flaked grains like wheat and oats to help make the beer more dense and thick.
At higher levels of alcohol, there’s a higher diuretic effect. With less alcohol, you’ll retain more of the liquid.
Have you ran the Boston Marathon?
I’ve run many marathons, but I’ve never run the Boston Marathon. Part of me wants to achieve the qualifying time, but it’s pretty fast for my age group: 3 hours and 15 minutes.
Why is beer almost synonymous with running?
People do like to be rewarded after they’ve done exercise, and beer is one thing people look forward to after along race. This is why we sponsor and are involved in a lot of running races. In the spring and fall, we have multiple races each weekend where we sell beer after them.
You guys are one of 154 commercial brewers in the state. Do you think craft brewers are starting to eat into each other’s businesses?
To be honest, I don’t. It depends what kind of model you’re going after. If you’re trying to be quite small and be a zip code brewery and just serve the local community, I think trouble comes when third-party retailers come in.
If you keep yourself small, sell to the local community, and don’t distribute outside much, I think you can do well.
Of course, that’s not our model.
So what is your model?
We have a brewery licensed in Medfield, but we don’t do much commercial brewing there. We do more pilot batches and recipe perfection. We contract brew in Ipswich currently.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Staff Writer Zachary Comeau.
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