![]() “One night I had a party for a bunch of my contractor-type friends - electricians, plumbers, HVAC, and whatnot,” Auclair said. Auclair used a building on the property to store equipment and vehicles. Not much was happening on the 450 acres, which was most recently used for hay making and cow grazing. “It would make for a much better story if I could tell you that I’ve been passionate about beer my whole life and always wanted a brewery, but I can’t say that.” John Auclair ![]() John Auclair, 64, recently laid it out like this, after returning from a beer delivery to a local bar: With a need to get back to work, John Auclair got to thinking that he would do something with the foreclosed farmland adjacent to his property in Colebrook. The Auclairs were co-owners of Electric Motion Company of Winsted, which was recently purchased by Hubbell Power. There are three key orchestrators of Norbrook’s story: brothers John and Randy Auclair and Colin Coan. This Connecticut beer explosion might appear to be mushrooming out of nowhere, but as Norbrook’s story demonstrates, each new addition comes with their own growing pains. It took a small army of contractors and craftspeople to shape it in the year and nine months from first application to opening day. That’s not just the gushing reaction of the stupefied: it’s verifiable.įrom the sweeping vista you get on the winding driveway, to the grand fire pit on the patio, to the clean lines of the tasting room and the well-placed party area above the brewhouse, Norbrook has the design of an art museum that’s been around for years, not months. It’s one of the most subtly beautiful breweries in the state. “Norbrook” is a portmanteau of Norfolk and Colebrook, the towns it more-or-less straddles. The owners of Norbrook Farm Brewery will not soon forget last October 14th: the day success closed the business. (The following was published in a different form in the Republican-American on January 18, 2019.)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |