Litherman's Brewing Company

tl;dr: Not a bad little brewery with a variety of styles and choices. Folks from NH seem to love it, so if you’re traveling through and want to meet some locals it’s not a bad place to check out. Sours are a little too thick and sweet, but DIPA’s are usually slightly above average.

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The longer cut:

I’ve been a few times now and while I think Lithermans is a good “nowhere else to go and the beer isn’t too bad” kind of place, I’m mixed on their beers…particularly their sours.

I love sours. Lambic is my favorite type of beer. I’ve been to Cantillon half a dozen times, 3 Fontenein, Russian River, Casey, etc., so I’m pretty well-versed in both controlled and spontaneous forms of brewing when it comes to this particular style. With that in mind, I really want to like Lithermans’ sours as much as some of my NH friends do, but their beers often taste more “sweet” than sour to me. There are definitely sour notes (I’m drinking Throne of Gold as I write this), but I find them thick/heavy with an over-abundance of sweetness. Some of their sours come across as a slightly-longer-boil away from being borderline pancake syrup. If you like that you should absolutely give them a try. They’re not bad, just not my preference when it comes to well-made sour beer.

With that said, generally I’ve enjoyed their DIPAS and a couple of their stouts. They brew an acceptable version of most East Coast DIPAs, just don’t come in expecting anything that’ll stop you mid-sip the way New England heavyweights (Hill Farmstead, Alchemist, Lawson’s, Trillium, Tree House) often do.

The vibe is nice. Nothing fancy - it’s in a dated business park - but the grittiness and big-personality locals make it a much more pleasurable brewery experience than many of the flashy, chic, faux-industrial trust-fund creations you’ll see in many US cities now. There’s something honest about Lithermans from a brew house standpoint - even if the beer itself has more tinkering/experimentation/growing pains to go through - that I appreciate.

Stop in, keep your expectations low, maybe avoid the sours, enjoy the DIPAs and stouts, and take it for what it is (a slightly above average local brewery) and you’ll have a fun time.

 

 

Good tunes, good atmosphere, great people and a great selection of beers

 

 

I am talking about this around their second anniversary. The beer business has been pretty good for them. They are located out of the way in a small industrial/[professional complex. Most of their product have a music theme. They have 6-8 beers on tap as well as for sale in growlers and in many cases cans. There are a few regular brews but often they put out some brewery-only one-offs. Sometimes they have a beer theme like several Saison variants to choose from. The bar has a wooden rustic feel and the benches at the tables have old 45 RPM records shellacked to them. One side of the tasting room has comfy arm chairs and the other side has the tables and benches. Decent beer too.