Welcome to the Boston Better Beer Bureau, our latest incarnation of the trusty suds reporting we’ve done at DigBoston ever since people referred to beer as suds. Really, we remember the days when we’d spend half our checks on fancy German bottles just so that we could review them, whereas these days breweries from all around New England kindly send us samplers and stay in touch. The BBBB is a new attempt to return that love, all while sharing more news about the innumerable microbreweries and pubs among us. Here’s a dispatch from a new favorite place. YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR OUR SPECIAL BBBB EMAIL LIST HERE
Who would ever think that if you give employees ownership and a reason to give a damn, that the word would get out among those with much faith in cooperative hustle and lure people from across the region to participate in such a common dream?
The team at Democracy Brewing, that’s who. As Dig reporter Haley Hamilton wrote last year in a feature that went on to win a national award:
The founders of Democracy Brewing come from two worlds that intersect often: alcohol and activism. James Razsa is a former labor and community activist; Jason Taggart was head brewer for eight years at John Harvard Brewery in Cambridge. Both aim to make their project not only a place that makes and serves great beer, but a pillar of the Boston worker’s community and a space to foster conversation, education, and empowerment.
Now that the dream has been in motion for a few months, we figured it was time to rehash our first visits there. DB is a new hall downtown where we will be pulling regular stool shifts, not simply out of love for its business model, but also for its grub and rotating in-house beer roster.
On our most recent trip we ordered up the 7.5 percent A.B.V. Consummate Rioter IPA, which came in a tulip roughly two hairs thinner than your typical beer glass. The setup fit the cold pop well, its darkish amber rolling smooth over our fingers to the last drop. The Rioter is yet another glorious newfangled double that will basically fool you—delivered to our community slab at Democracy Brewing with sublime inch-and-a-half headroom, the citrus hops made for an experience that steers clear of showy and still satisfies without denting the tummy. We could drink it all night. We did drink it all night.
We’ll be back to cover new brews as our friends at Democracy keep cranking them out, but last time, in addition to the Consummates, we washed down a hamburger the size of two fists with a seasonal brown IPA chased by a Workers Pint, their trademark basic.
All in all, it was a heck of a day for democracy.
And we got pretty silly drunk as well.
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
