Yankee Brew News Archive

Hammer & Nail Brewers of Connecticut Said Goodbye to Corporate Bureaucracy and Politics

Originally Published: 12/96

By: Gregg Glaser

Last March 6, Peter Hammer and Kit Nagel, brewer/owners of Hammer & Nail Brewers of Connecticut, LLC, sold their first keg of Hammer & Nail Brown Ale to a local bar.

That sale culminated a one-year-plus adventure for the partners as they planned, financed and built their brewery in the Oakville section of Watertown, Connecticut. Six months later Hammer & Nail had also brewed a Vienna lager and installed a bottling line, and their beers were offered for sale throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island and Westchester and Putnam Counties in New York.

Hammer and Nagel (Nagel means "nail" in German) met about nine years ago. They lived on the same street in Watertown, and their children were in school together. They shared a love of beer, and began homebrewing. Before forming Hammer & Nail Brewers, Hammer, 39, spent fourteen years working for IBM in the company's marketing division. With a degree in computer science engineering, Hammer specialized in technical sales, market analysis and consulting for IBM. Nagel's background is in sales, first for International Paper and then with a dairy consulting firm. He set up dairy plants and ice cream factories all over the world. His experience proved invaluable in building a brewery. Even his paper sales background came in handy with the packaging of Hammer & Nail's bottled products.

When asked why they decided to open a microbrewery, Hammer's response is easy: "Read our bottle label." Okay, that's easy. The label, featuring an engraving of Hammer and Nagel carrying a beer barrel suspended from a wooden pole resting on their shoulders and with the brewery building in the background, reads, "So I said 'to heck with the bureaucracy' and Kit said 'who needs the politics' and we decided that brewing the freshest, highest quality beer would be our lifelong pursuit."

Deciding to open a microbrewery is one thing. Accomplishing this task is another. Hammer and Nagel knew they needed help. After writing a business plan and mission statement, they found and hired retired brewer Bill Anderson as a consultant. Anderson, with forty years' brewing experience, is a 1956 graduate of the U.S. Brewer's Academy in Mount Vernon, New York. His career included assignments at Rhode Island's Narragansett Brewery, as well as with Piels, Schlitz and Stroh's.

Hammer, Nagel and Anderson designed and installed a 30-barrel brewery in 15,000-square-feet of space in a former garden tool manufacturing building. The four-vessel brewhouse comes from Criveller Company of Niagara Falls, Canada. The system uses a mash tun/brew kettle, lauter tun, hot wort settling tank and hot liquor tank. Complementing these vessels in the brewery are six 60-barrel fermenters, a bright beer tank, a keg filler and an Italian bottling line capable of filling 2,000 bottles an hour.

Choosing what beer to first brew was a big decision. Hammer didn't see a return on another pale ale on the market. Having lived for several years as a teenager in Vienna, he was partial to brewing a Vienna-style lager. Nagel, on the other hand, was born in London and lived there until he was 12-years-old. His first choice was to brew an English-style brown ale. The discussion between the partners continued, and as they tell the story in their promotional literature, "Peter, being the nice guy he is, said ... umm ... okay," to the brown ale. Anderson picked a Narragansett ale yeast from the yeast banks at the University of Rhode Island and formulated a recipe for an English-style brown ale. The beer uses two-row pale, chocolate, caramel and Victory malts, Brewer's Gold hops for bittering and Willamette hops for aroma. The soft, gentle, walnut-colored beer is brewed to a gravity of 12.5( Plato and comes in at just over five percent alcohol by volume.

Hammer finally got his way with the brewery's second beer. Hammer & Nail Vienna Lager (12( Plato, 5% abv) is brewed with two-row pale, caramel and Vienna malts and is hopped for bitterness and aroma with the famous Saaz hops.

Rounding out the staff at Hammer & Nail are five other people. Peter Hammer's wife, Eliza, handles promotions and special events. Hammer's brother, Warren, is the brewery's New York sales representative, and Hammer's parents, Jacob and Gloria help wherever needed. Chris Keller, former manager at Connecticut's great beer bar, Eli Cannon's, was recently hired as Director of Brewery Operations.

Tours of Hammer & Nail Brewers of Connecticut are available by appointment. The brewery is located at 900 Main Street in Watertown, Connecticut. Call 860-274-5911.

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