Rising Tide then moved into 12-ounce bottles, which again did well, but as he started to see the move into cans, Sanborn began to work with a mobile canner to put out some of his beers, such as Maine Island Trail Ale (MITA)-a hoppy session ale-and a gose in cans. Sanborn filled all the bottles by hand in the early days at their first location, but as they moved to a new space after just a year, he realized that sales of the 22-ounce bottles were soft, a sign of the changing times. A longtime workhorse for brewers, these bomber bottles were a way for craft brewers to stand out on shelves and offer consumers an attractive alternative package that could be shared (or not). The brewery started off packaging in 22-ounce bottles and because of state laws at the time wasn’t able to offer beer for consumption at the brewery, so everything went out to the market. We need to balance between those things.” Listening to the Market Today we’re doing that, but we’re also producing a lot of one-offs. Back then, there was a focus on your core beers, the ones that anchored your portfolio. “When we started, there were maybe thirty breweries in the state, and now we have 130. “In the grand scheme of the third wave of craft, we’re Old School,” he says.
That sounds quaint, or like something that every brewer should say, but Sanborn and his brewery walk the walk, and it’s one reason that as Maine’s beer industry has grown, they’ve managed to grow and thrive in a crowded, often-focused-on-flash-in-the-pan market. Throughout it all, the founder, co-owner, and director of brewing operations at Rising Tide Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, has focused on quality about all else.
In less than a decade in business, Nathan Sanborn has modified, disregarded, or completely shredded his business plan, all while trying to keep up with the whipsaw machinations that have been craft beer of late.