StuffMadeinMA.com • 2 0 2 1 • S T U F F 21
L
ost Towns Brewing in
Gilbertville, a village of
Hardwick, is getting into the
groove of things after first
opening in 2018 and facing
pandemic challenges shortly
thereafter. Open Fridays and weekends and
frequently hosting live music, the brewery
plans to soon nearly double its seating
capacity with the addition of a new outdoor
beer garden. Head brewer and part-owner
Bruce McDowell, who joined the team in
February, spoke with Cool STUFF about
these plans and more.
How did Lost Towns Brewing
come to be?
The backstory is Lost Towns Brewing
opened in December of 2018. The original
venture was done by three partners. The
brewery opened in 2018 and continued
operations through 2019 and then, obvi-
ously, COVID happened. And during
COVID, the brewery tried to be open spo-
radically after, basically, the world shut
down. They tried to do what they could to
stay open.
The brewery essentially went into hiber-
nation in August of last year. So while it
was in hibernation, two of the three own-
ers, due to personal reasons, stepped away
from the business, leaving Jim and Pam
Spurrell at a crossroads with what to do
with the brewery. They loved the brewery,
loved the community, and wanted to keep
it going. They approached me in January
of this year to come in as part owner as
well as the head brewer, beginning in
February, and we started brewing beer
again that month. We opened our taproom
again in April.
What's the story behind the
name?
It's in reference to the four towns lost
when the Quabbin Reservoir was created.
That's how the name came to be: It's an
homage to the four lost towns. Our logo
depicts that. If you look at it closely, you
B Y M O N I C A B E N E V I D E S
McDowell has helped oversee the expansion of Lost Towns
Brewing seating area in Gilbertville.
P H O T O S / S L O A N E M . P E R R O N
Lost Towns Brewing in
Gilbertville, under a new
head brewer, plans to
expand
$75,849
Average annual salary of a Worcester
County construction worker in 2020
$130,220
Average annual salary of a biomedical
engineer in Worcester County in 2020, the
highest-paying manufacturing job in the
region
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