Dam Brewhouse - Craft Micro-Brewhouse North of the Campton Dam!
From a bottle of mead at a friend’s wedding to a bustling brewhouse in New Hampshire, the story of Sarah Dreshaj and John Anderson is one of passion, perseverance, and community. The founders of The Dam Brewhouse, LLC, Sarah and John turned their love for brewing into a vibrant hub for craft beer enthusiasts, starting with homebrewing experiments and evolving into a full-fledged brewery that celebrates creativity and connection. The seeds of The Dam Brewhouse were planted over 20 years ago when John’s high school friend introduced him to the art of mead making. What began as a hobby turned into a shared passion for Sarah and John, leading them to create unique beers for gatherings and celebrations. After years of experimenting and perfecting their craft, the couple decided to take a leap of faith and build their own brewhouse. In this Delivery Rank’s interview, Sarah and John share their inspiring journey, from the early days of homebrewing to the trials and triumphs of opening a brewhouse.
Your journey from distilling moonshine to opening Dam Brewhouse is an incredible story. What inspired you to pivot to brewing beer, and how has the experience shaped your approach to business?
Our journey in part is wanting to be a part of our community and stay small to focus on our local community. Not wanting to grow to where we distribute statewide. Our need is to provide for ourselves and our community. When we first put pencil to paper to plan our business, it was a distillery. At the time there were only 6 craft distilleries in the state. Now there are 12. Our hope was to create a small craft distillery, BUT the rules put in place by the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) division of the federal government stipulated that our distillery needed to be 50 feet away from any residence. AND the distillery needed to be built and filled with equipment before we put in an application. The application process was taking about 350 days at the time. This would have necessitated almost a year of overhead without the chance of any income which was rich for the finances we had. A brewery was faster, cheaper and didn’t require the same restrictions. Furthermore the creation of a good wash which is created in the same way as beer was the first step in the distillation process. AND we had been brewing beer together since we met, so we already had those skills. Our previous life experiences lead us to only doing what we could afford with the cash we had available. We use very little credit, and we needed to adapt what we were able to do financially with what our circumstances were. That led us down the path of a brewery with the distillery in the plan for year 5.
Starting as home brewers with a passion for experimentation, what are some of the most memorable beers you’ve created, and how did they come to life?
We have made many beers, often our beers start with a zany idea. "Campfire Kumbaya" is a brown ale that came about at a fire in our beer garden. It was suggested that it would be cool to call a beer Kumbaya. Great, BUT what does Kumbaya taste like? Well, you sing Kumbaya around the camp fire at summer camp eating smores, so it needs to taste like a smores. So we make a Smores beer with toasted marshmallows, Ghram crackers, and chocolate bars. And yes it does taste like a smores and we call it “Campfire Kumbaya”.
Another beer, We were given a case of Nilla Wafers to make a beer out of. Sure enough we made "’Nilla enuf". And yes, it does taste like a Nilla wafer.
For Harry Potter fans we made Butter Beer. “Diagon Delight" was the toughest beer to make and get right. Not too sweet, not too bitter and the fat in butter from butterscotch needed to be worked around. We will be a part of the Bacon and beer festival in June. So a Bacon beer is in the future, but that is the only hint.
Community seems to play a big role in your story. How has the support from your local community impacted your journey, and how do you give back?
The community helped build the Dam Brewhouse and in return the Dam Brewhouse helps to build the community. When we were building the Dam Brewhouse, we had workdays on Friday and at 5:00 we quit for ‘Beer with friends’. We made a T Shirt with symbols for Eye-Work-4-Beer for those that helped swing a hammer or screw in a board. We had some great parties, met lots of the neighbors and built a great spot for friends to meet. Without the community support we would not have the brewery, and the community wouldn’t have a spot for the running group to meet on Sunday Mornings, The Painting group to meet. The Local artist to have a place to display their art, The historical society to have a place for their events, not to mention the nearly $8000 we donated to the local first responders in 2024. We make beer, and we make our income on the beer we sell, so as long as a local group has a need for a space that we can accommodate, we are happy to provide that space. Of course we would hope to sell some beer, but it is not as necessary as bringing people together.
Craft brewing is both an art and a science. How do you balance creativity with the technical precision required to create consistent, high-quality beers?
Brewing as well as distilling is both a science AND an art. Both science and art support each other. Brewers that are technically perfect can be boring, like big commercial beer. It is a technical triumph that Budweiser can make as much beer that always tastes the same in breweries all over the world. We don’t try to make our beers taste the same every time. We often find a special batch of malt grown locally, or malted special. We try to lean into the differences that the local products make. Sometimes that is a challenge to find the right style or type of beer that will work for a specific selection of raw materials. Our Babe’s Triticale Barleywine is one example. Triticale is a hybrid grain of wheat and rye, and is wonderful. Blue Ox Malthouse malted a batch of this grain and in talking with the sales person Ian, we hatched an idea to make a barleywine with Maine grown hops as well as the organic Maine grown Triticale malt. Because of the qualities of the malt, it makes a wonderful Barleywine, a little dryer flavor leads to a bit more balanced beer than straight barley would. In the next month, or Yankee Pilsner will be available, made with the grain grown at the Morel Farm in Boscowen, Malted by Valley Malt in Hadley Massachusetts and with Cascade and Magnum hops grown in Massachusetts this is a local as we can get in New Hampshire.
You’ve hinted at future plans for expanding the tasting room into a brewpub. What excites you most about this next phase, and what can beer lovers look forward to?
While we continue to add to the offerings in our tasting room. We will not change our license to a brewpub. We will continue to be a tasting room. Namely because we allow well behaved dogs and their owners and as soon as we put in the necessary kitchen for a brewpub that would need to end and our furry family members would need to stay in the car. However we do have an agreement with the Rock Hopper Cafe to bring morning coffee and breakfast to our tasting room. It is our hope that in the future we will be able to increase our offerings to include lunch and dinner offerings, from the Cafe kitchen as well, but time will tell. We also have Profile Spirits. We received the distilling license in July and have been working hard on adding bottles of spirits to our offerings, and well as simple cocktails in our tasting room. Focused on Whiskys, Rum, Vodka and Gin. We hope to continue to add to our bottlings as we move forward.
As always we continue to look for ways to bring people together. As such. You will not find TV’s in the Dam Brewhouse, what you will find is games and conversations, Great activities, Great drink, great food, great people all enjoying a great time just being together.
To read more about Dam Brewhouse, please visit https://www.dambrewhouse.com/