Behind the Brew: Remnant Brewing
I’m lucky enough to live close to a bunch of great breweries in Somerville, MA, but have quickly fallen in love with this week’s “Behind the Brew”: Remnant Brewing!
Found in Bow Market, the little brewery is home to some of the coolest beers (and some of the coolest people I’ve met, too!), delicious coffee, and good company. Open at noon, you’ll see the work-from-home people typing away on their laptops (aka me) throughout the brewery, sipping on coffee, tea, and/or beer. Remnant’s back patio has ample space, and you’ll feel at home with the funky mural decorating the surrounding walls. Bow Market gets lively in the evening, and Remnant’s partnership with the surrounding food shops allows people to order food to their tables while enjoying your beer at the brewery.
I was lucky to be able to speak with both Brittany Lajoie (General Manager) and Jay Sturm (“Beer Guy” aka taproom supervisor). Talking with Brittany and Jay made me feel like we were old friends— they’re just those kinds of awesome people.
Definitely check out Remnant on your next stop through Somerville, but without further ado, here’s the interview!
Tell me about your journey in the beer industry. What attracted you to this profession?
Brittany: “I started working in a cafe, a brewery, a medium-fancy restaurant, and a catering company all around the same time. #hustle. The brewery was the most fun, of course! It felt like a great job in which people cared about the product, guests were really passionate about visiting and sharing their excitement, and there was so much to learn! It was definitely a roundabout way to finding myself in the beer industry, but I started by giving tours, and just kept sticking around!”
Jay: “My journey into the beer world actually started through a flower shop, way back when. The owner of the flower shop’s husband was starting Clown Shoes Brewing. And I didn’t drink craft beer, I drank Miller High Life, but that kind of pulled me into the world a little bit. And then I worked in his dad’s liquor store and became the beer manager and learned more about beer. That’s what started the passion. That’s when imports were really big and Belgium beer was king. Then from there, I realized I wanted to experience the people who were drinking the beer because making the recommendations was cool, but there was this missed point of “here you should try this beer” and them going home, drinking it, coming back a week later, and telling me whether or not they liked it. I wanted it to be more instantaneous. So I ended up working at Trillium some years later, working the tap room. I got that experience for sure, but then they were a little too big, a little too commercial, corporate, so I shifted over to Springdale (Jack’s Abby is almost at that same level). That also felt too big. Then I came over to Remnant, where it has a lot more of that community, local feeling. Trillium had people coming from all over the world, it was insane. It was really cool; you were definitely on the pulse of the industry but… shifting over to here [to Remnant] where everything is made on these small systems, pretty much just Charlie (head brewer) doing everything, there’s a lot more connectivity between us, the brewer, the beer, and the world here.”
Tell me a little bit about the brewery you work at. What’s your favorite part? What’s your least favorite part? What do you look forward to?
Brittany Lajoie, GM of Remnant
Brittany: “My current brewery is everything that I can ask for! We have a small management team, meaning that it’s really easy to make decisions about changes or goals that we want to reach. We have a tight-knit staff, and people really support each other and have a great level of camaraderie. My favorite part is probably also the fact that we have a full cafe, and you can get an espresso from us anytime, basically open to close, to keep your night going! My least favorite part, especially right now, is when people wander in and have no idea who we are or what we do. Obviously it’s great to have exposure and foot traffic, but I feel like I’m super conscious about which breweries I want to visit and why, so it’s kind of funny to me when folks come in, and really don’t even know that we make the beer here!
I look forward to, and have a little bit of dread of, Saturdays, every week. It’s really fascinating to me that in this area, so many people come to visit us on Saturdays, and we can be so completely slow the rest of the week. Obviously most folks have weekends off, but it still stands in stark contrast. Why don’t folks want to walk around on a Wednesday and see what’s happening in the neighborhood? I say this a little tongue in cheek, but it’s a real frustration that I have with the industry in Boston in particular. I feel like there are other cities that are better at “spreading out” when people want to go out.”
Jay: “I used to just walk up and down this street all the time, I was in the area, but I never knew about Bow Market. My friend was like “we should go check out Remnant”, and I was like “how is there just…a brewery that just exists down the street that I missed somehow?!” So, I used to be a regular here and used to sit at the corner of the bar and drink Dreampop (one of Remnant’s awesome beers) all day, every day. I chatted with Christina and Pandora (bartenders) a bunch and made fast friends here. Christina had just moved from Virginia and didn’t really know anyone in the area, and we would chat about this and that. I always say that Dreampop and Christina are two reasons that I work here.
Jay Sturm, “Beer Guy” at Remnant
Dreampop and Christina are some big highlights here. I like that everything is done pretty small batch, comparatively. Charlie is very precise about what he is doing. And finally, we service a pretty local community, a lot of our customer-base is Somerville/Cambridge, maybe Greater Boston, but feels like a lot of people are right from home; and I think the surrounding Bow Market community too, in a way (I always say it could be a sitcom) where it feels almost like high school—all these friends in different classrooms doing their thing during the day and then we meet up here and there! I also love that Remnant has coffee because I definitely feel like it makes us a hub where everyone comes through for something!
Pre-pandemic, we also used to always have a bunch of work from home people all over the place—honestly to a point where we didn’t even have tables for people trying to drink beer because we had people drinking coffee/tea and just hanging out on their computers all day! That’s definitely a little different now, we have a few people who come in and do some work, but it’s not the same as it used to be.
I don’t love all the new construction and development around the area, because I don’t know what kind of new traffic it’s going to bring in. I guess maybe I’m a little afraid of change, but we’ll see what happens.”
What is a sort of surprise/unexpected fact that people wouldn’t know about your profession?
Brittany: “Currently, I think it might be a surprise that I do absolutely everything at Remnant. I currently run our social media and website editing (but hope to pass it off to a more experienced staff person soon!), I do all of our cafe inventory and purchasing, I work with our designer for label designs and order all of those, I am on-site for canning days, and I work weekend shifts alongside the staff. It’s been really intense taking on basically every aspect of what needs to be done, but as event inquiries and planning events has slowed down, and it’s been so slow in general throughout the winter, it’s been possible for me to manage everything. I don’t know if that speaks to my profession, but definitely to my current role!”
Jay: “It’s funny, whenever you tell someone you work at a brewery, the first question is: “oh, so you brew beer?” And the answer is no. There’s a very small fraction of people at our brewery who actually brew the beer. Then people will say, “oh, so you just hang out and drink beer all day?” Which… sort of. Maybe some days more than others. It is a very relaxed job, but I think that the cleaning is what most of us are doing. Most of this job is actively cleaning the space, which is… fine. I like cleaning, I’m just that kind of person. But if you’re not ready for it, that’s most of what this job is. Pouring beer is about 10% of your job.”
How has COVID affected your experience working in the industry?
Brittany: “Basically, we changed everything except for the fact that we serve beer. We stopped serving coffee for a long time, because it’s super labor intensive, unpredictable how much we’ll sell to keep stock on hand, and low profit margin. We started doing delivery, table side service for beer, and reservations - none of which we ever imagined before COVID. Probably the toughest thing was just acting like whatever decision I made was the right choice.”
Jay: “It was so wild. When COVID first became a thing and everyone was talking about it, I thought, “but we’ve without problem survived so many pandemics, I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal,” and a whole bunch of us were discussing this over $0.25 wings at Magoon’s… And then Remnant shut down, because we obviously couldn’t serve here on site. All of us were unemployed, and Brit would be here serving café and beer to-go stuff.
Without planning, all of us would wander down here, because this was our little home, our little “moth-to-flame” kind of thing. It was something to do, somewhere to go, and felt like home. So, if I sat around here drinking iced coffee, I’d just see everyone I knew working here, all of my friends. But at the time we were all estranged because it was like “oh, we can’t be seen together…”
It was weird. I think we all miss each other so much in that capacity and you can’t just hang out anymore.”
How has Remnant adapted your business model and strategies in response to the pandemic?
Brittany: “We began packaging and selling beer through a distributor right before COVID. We thought it would be a good marketing expense and didn’t ever think it would be our only lifeline to selling product. Our on-site beer sales dropped by 50-100% at various times, and selling beers in cans was the only way to stay connected to our customers.”
Jay: “We switched gears to becoming a beer-to-go place, so just filling infinite crowlers. It was exhausting—labor-intensive, tedious, I guess. Then when we finally did make the switch to four-packs, that was wonderful. Operating as a beer-to-go place was such a drag: You would kind of stand here, hope people would show up and give you some money to hopefully make it through however long this pandemic was going to last. You’d hear about all these places closing, temporarily or permanently, and I’d think “I hope that’s not us… what are we going to do?” This entire industry was shut down… the industry I’d been working in for more than a decade. I thought, “I’m not an office person; I don’t know where I’m going to go.”
So, I’m glad we’re back!”
2020 has proven to be an incredibly challenging year for the beer industry. How do you stay motivated through these hardships?
Brittany: “I personally find motivation from 3 specific places:
The staff that we employ, who are such a great part of who we are. They need us, and we need them!
The customers who end up becoming regulars - it’s so nice to see familiar faces, and it means a lot that people love our space and product enough to return again and again
Thinking about our mission statement to be a place of community, to find a beer for everyone who walks in the door, and to be a model employer.”
Jay: “A big part of it is that I just like having something to do because I remember those three weeks of just nothing—and it was cool for a week; I was attacking Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and playing video games and thought “okay, this isn’t so bad…!” But you just feel useless and I didn’t realize until I didn’t have it, which is how much I need to connect with people on a daily basis. My five other roommates were not enough people for me. I need hundreds of interactions to get that all out of my system! When we shut down, that was what I missed most: being around people. Just hearing people’s stories, talking about this and that, was huge for me.”
What is the most drastic change that you’ve noticed in the industry since the pandemic hit?
Brittany: “I think the most dramatic change is probably how different each brewery is these days - before COVID, you kind of knew what you were getting into, but a lot of spots have adopted really different interpretations of the rules for COVID making guests more confused than ever about what to expect when they arrive at a brewery.”
Jay: “As everything shifted, people were afraid to go out and be in public. But there was so much drinking in parks and people seemed to seek all these alternatives, and I think liquor stores saw a huge boost in sales. People returned to making drinks/having drinks at home. When we first reopened, it was kind of slow… not everyone was ready to go back out. The people who did come out were the people who needed it. They were very grateful and so appreciative, and just so sweet about it. They were thanking us for being here, for being open, and it felt so good. It definitely made it worthwhile for me to be here.”
Have you noticed any silver linings in your industry since the pandemic hit?
Brittany: “Not many.”
Jay: “We do table service at Remnant now, which we never did before. In the before times, we were told if there’s a table sitting down to go ask them if they need anything, clear glassware, etc. I thought, “that’s stupid, they’ll come to us if they want something!” because that’s just what I was used to. But now that it’s all table service, and we go take orders at tables and talk with people, you definitely get a chance to get people’s stories and learn from them, and I think that’s something that I will keep forever now. You get a better chance to connect with people this way than if they run up to the bar and shout a drink order at you and disappear. You don’t have to fight for that connection as much. I’m super chatty and will spend 10 minutes chatting with a table getting their drink order!
On a smaller level, the four-packs are awesome because I love being able to share our beer with people. Bringing half of those in crowlers isn’t as cost-effective or easy to split with people.”
What are the best things local customers can do to support your business?
Brittany: “Come get a beer during off-peak hours! (Aka any time other than 7 pm on weekdays or anytime Saturdays!) If we’re full, grab some beer to go.”
Jay: “Come out, follow the rules, don’t complain and ask questions/specialty favors… we’re trying! We’re doing everything we can! Dump out your wallets at the end of your stay, because everyone here is working super hard to get you the things that you want. The dollar-beer approach isn’t what you think it is.
And to all you wonderful people out there who are doing things great and coming out to be wonderful: thank you!
(Also, don’t drink all the Dreampop, because I want some too!)”
What is your favorite beer?
Brittany: “I love lagers these days. Notch and Silvaticus are making some of my favorite beers. I had a dark saison from Oxbow recently that was awesome.”
Jay: “Dreampop is my work beer, it’s what made me fall in love with Remnant to begin with. Definitely for an everyday kind of beer, I could drink that day in, day out.
Typically barrel-aged stouts having my heart. I have many sweet teeth! Outermost Grave is a beer that we’ve done a couple iterations of, an 11% barrel-aged stout. I could do Dreampop and just that, back and forth forever.
A desert island beer? It would have to be a pilsner. I think that now the beer world is changing a little bit where IPAs have had their time in the spotlight, and everyone is shifting away to lighter styles. I could definitely see our Just Pils or Spelt Pils, I could just crush for eternity. It’s light enough that you can drink all day… if I’m on a desert island, I’m not going to last long—I want to go out drunk!”
What’s your favorite coffee drink?
Jay: “Oooh. So, I wasn’t a coffee drinker before I worked here. I kind of got introduced to the coffee culture through Brittany and Christina, learning bits here and there. I find coffee, chocolate, wine, and beer to be so similar, kind in the process of it all. I started just drinking little sips of hot coffee, trying espressos. I think iced lattes were my gateway, that’s what hooked me. They’re kind of like an ice cream drink—I like sweet and creamy, rich and chocolatey things. From there I started drinking those, and now I’ll drink iced coffee, cappuccinos, and espresso shots, whatever. I think my guilty pleasure are the iced lattes with oat milk though.”
Coffee ritual at home?
Jay: “I also got into the whole pour-over world. I have my scale, measure out my beans, grind them up… I don’t know if it’s the coffee that wakes me up or just the actual ritual of making it. It gets me out of bed and it gets me going, and that’s just wonderful.”
What's a little known fact about beer that many people don't know?
Brittany: “Drinking beer in the sun in a clear glass is the worst thing that you can do for the beer. Use a koozie, ask for it to be served in the can, or just skip on drinking an IPA in the sun!”
Jay: “The coolest thing for me that happened (and disclaimer: I haven’t actually discussed it with a brewer for scientific accuracy) was that I was working at a brewery years ago and they were brewing this Belgian beer. A lot of times, brewers will re-pitch the same yeast because some of the specialties will get expensive. So they were brewing this beer and the yeast had consumed all the monosaccharides that were in the tank, and refused to go after the more complex sugars because it was like “maybe you’ll just give me more of these basic sugars that are easier for me to digest”. So the beer didn’t ferment as early as it was supposed to because this yeast was figuring out that there are easier sugars and it can just wait to see if those better sugars would come along. I think it was another day or two before it started attacking the specialty Belgian sugars that were in this beer, and that’s when it hit me: beer is so alive. It’s this living organism that relies on this process in order to ferment this drink that we’re all drinking. I thought that was super cool. That and coolships (essentially, open-fermentation, steel bathtubs where wild yeast float in)
Also, there are yeast-ranchers who travel to different parts of the world to collect various strains of yeast to ferment beer out of. Beer can be as geeky as you want it to be, or as Bud-Light as you want it to be!”
Anything Remnant is doing that people can look forward to?
Jay: “Yeah, there’s always some fun stuff in the barrels. A couple things coming down the line. I talked to Charlie about next upcoming brews on the less-sour side of the barrel-aged stuff, and it sounds like we have a pretty solid lineup going right through to until at least October of this year. I don’t want to spoil the fun though! Trust in Charlie!”
Huge thank you to Brittany and Jay for just being the coolest.