Full Pours: Brewing their own beer not just a WHYM in Hampton

HAMPTON — Ultimately, Matt Barrett’s goal is a common one: to move out of the basement and into a new spacious place of his own.

For now, however, the head brewer and part owner of WHYM is content to do what he does best, namely turn out one tasty batch after the next on the two-barrel system that currently resides in the basement bar at the popular brewery and restaurant at 853 Lafayette Road in Hampton.

Adding a brewery to the craft beer mecca, which aptly gets its name from the four major ingredients found in beer (water, hops, yeast and malt), has long been in the business plan for WHYM, which was founded in 2013 by Alex Aviles and his wife, Gretchin, in Portsmouth. In 2019, the couple moved the operation down Route 1 to Hampton to the former home of Ron Jillian’s and a bank before that. Along the way, both Barrett and Bob Levine, a longtime patron and lawyer, joined the ownership group.

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WHYM’s brewery officially came to fruition last March and plans to build out on the right side of the building, past the old enclosed bank teller’s office seemed imminent.

“Then we got a quote,” said Barrett with a laugh. “We were like let’s push it back to the area that is enclosed.”

Now the goal is roughly a 900-square-foot brew space in the old teller's quarters with a seven or 10-barrel system for Barrett to work his magic with hopes of breaking ground this spring. In the meantime, however, Barrett has been busy plying his trade, first on Levine’s 10-gallon homebrew system and now on the larger current setup. The beers have been well received among WHYM’s loyal and large legion of savvy palates and some of the biggest hitters have surprisingly not been the hazy IPAs, but rather a German hefeweizen and Barrett’s Surf Spot Saison, a smooth farmhouse ale.

“We do brew a lot of IPAs because they move, but we do like to pepper in a lot of the classic styles, too,” says Barrett, a longtime homebrewer who honed his skill at Moat Mountain Brewing Co. in North Conway and Great Rhythm in Portsmouth.

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One of WHYM’s current offerings that is not only packed with flavor, but also a poignant back story is The Eights, a double IPA. The beer was brewed in memory of Bob Levine’s nephew and WHYM employee, Jason Shuryn. A former Navy Seal, who often assisted Barrett in the brew room, Shuryn, 33, tragically died in August when he suffered a medical event while driving and crashed his SUV. All proceeds from the beer go to a trust for his young son.

“Everybody loved him and he was the hardest working guy,” said Barrett, who patterned the beer loosely after the Bissell Brothers staple, Swish. “He absolutely loved double IPAs.”

Through some tinkering Barrett was able to get the ABV to land right on 8.8 in honor of Jason’s birthday of 8-8-88.

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Known for one of the most expansive and diverse craft beer lists, WHYM has managed to seamlessly balance integrating their own offerings, like The Eights, while still offering plenty of local and national variety on its 24-tap system.

“Knowing that we can put our beers next to some of the best beers in the world constantly gives us that challenge,” Alex Aviles points out. “It’s raising the expectations of ourselves. If we are going to put the best beers on tap, our beer needs to be the best beer as well.”

Aviles still looks back fondly on WHYM’s first location, an eclectic, hard to find space tucked behind an apartment complex off of Route 1 in Portsmouth, and marvels at how much the craft beer landscape has changed just since then.

“It was kind of a hidden in plain sight spot and that was kind of the allure,” he noted of the space that drew craft beer lovers from all over with its diverse and hard-to-find beer list. “Since then, beer has changed and you can find great beer everywhere. It was a drop in the ocean back then compared to what we are looking at in the craft beer industry today.”

Two years into the new location, Aviles says he still occasionally gets holdovers from Ron Jillian’s who wander in, but is blown away by how people have embraced the new location which still features many of the popular menu items from the original pub, like the Hipster Cowgirl and the O.G. burgers, to go along with the expansive beer offerings.

“We were like a year in and people would come in and be like, ‘Where’s the lasagna? I can’t believe there’s no lasagna on this menu,’” Aviles recalled with a chuckle.

“It took a little while to make a house a home. We just had to wear it in a little bit and put a little WHYM into it.”

Czar’s strikes gold

Speaking of whyms, Henry Vance of Czar’s Brewery in Exeter, a.k.a “The Czar,” said the idea to enter four of his beers in the 2021 Brewski international tasting competition was little more than that. But the move paid off handsomely as Czar’s was awarded four medals, including a gold medal for its English brown ale, Old Brown Sally. Czar’s also received bronze medals for its Belgian tripel, Abdjj Weg, its Porridge Oatmeal Stout, and its Irish red ale, Smiling Eyes. Vance thought Abdjj Weg, which loosely translates into “Abbey Road” in Dutch, might have the best chance at top honors.

“Browns are one of those things where there was a phase a couple years ago where everyone was making a brown,” said Vance. “They are more common than Belgium tripels, so I thought that maybe our Belgium tripel might have a chance. Then again you are putting beer in the mail, so you are never 100-percent confident about what is going to happen. I was very pleasantly surprised.”

While credit for the brewing goes to Vance and his fellow brewers Mike Bray and Evan Wolfe, equal plaudits should also go to Vance’s wife Christine who completed all the paperwork and got the four entrants into the mail. Vance says the awards have been quite well-received among the regulars, or the “nobility” as he refers to them, at the popular spot on Center Street in downtown Exeter.

Hope Rises at Loaded Question

There are always some tasty offerings up on the beer board at Loaded Question, but one special beer hit all the right notes this fall not just for its hoppy flavor, but also the worthy cause it supports.

Each year the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation (NPCF) in conjunction with Brewing Funds the Cure selects one brewery from each state to brew its signature beer, Rising Hope IPA, and tabbed the popular Portsmouth brewery as its New Hampshire partner this year. Suffice it to say, Loaded Question answered the call and then some raising over $6,500 for pediatric cancer.

“People liked it to begin with and then when they saw what it was supporting they were buying cases of it and bringing it home,” said Loaded Question’s Peter Mead.

All proceeds from each beer sold went to NPCF and the brewery partnered with The Kitchen on Islington Street and High Definition Fitness locally to further maximize its donation. The bulk of the brewing ingredients for the beer were donated by industry partners through Brewing Funds The Cure. Loaded Question sold out Rising Hope IPA on tap and in cans in just two weeks, but Mead says the brewery plans to team up with the organization again next fall.

Full Pours is a regular column that covers the craft beer scene on the Seacoast. Follow on Instagram @full_pours. Email Bob at ralbright33@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Full Pours: Brewing their own beer not just a WHYM in Hampton, NH