Lowell Beer Works....Closed for renovation

Hearing all staff let go & completely new concept forthcoming.

Though with all the investment in the brewing equipment in Lowell I'd be shocked if they turned it into a clone of Tap & Table in Waltham - which is a nice-looking spot, has good beer selection & supposedly has good food, but is WAY overpriced & is always a ghost town. Totally wrong concept for Boston 'burbs.

Curious to see what comes of a "few week" closure (per FB page).

 

Lowell can potentially support something like Tap & Table better than Waltham. You've got the University right there, you've got the baseball field, and the Tsongas Center. Before it got bought out by Boston Beer Works it was a much better restaurant for sure. It was a bit too high end but certainly something a bit better than Beer Works would be fine both for better beer and better food. Suburbanites have many reasons to visit Lowell but not a ton to visit Waltham. If you are going to Waltham you might as well go to Boston or Cambridge and have other options as well.

 

What the hell happened with Tap and Table after the owener's said F it and left?

 

The "owner" was & is Joe Slesar, the BeerWorks owner. He became infatuated with the VT beer/resto scene with his trips up to Stowe & tried to import it to Waltham, even importing a restaurateur from the area - not so fast.

I have no idea how he expected to fill a fairly large piece of expensive real estate with a pricey niche concept, I thought he was smarter than that. I believe if it would've been a straight-up BW (sans actual brewing - thanks City of Waltham!) it would've been pretty successful. No idea how the place stays open with minimal crowds.

 

Not continuing to can old dinosaurs of beers in an age when tastes have changed would have been the way to go. Contender IPA was very well received. Canning that would have drove demand. Then you work from there.

Instead they stuck to the malty bitter relic that was back Bay IPA apparently even in the face of seeing that people didn't want that type of IPA anymore.

The Lowell location in particular had some of the saddest food and worst service of near anywhere I've been in the last 10 years.

 

That was the plan when I was there and brewing Contender. Sadly it never happened. I did try a Contender recently and found it to have changed substantially from the original recipe.

 

That's sad. Where you at nowadays? I miss your BW beers.

 

John Harvard's in Framingham, I believe. Haven't been there for a couple months, but the IPAs were ridiculously good.

 

Yeah after you left Contender went from good to inconsistent to OK then not so good. Heard they just subbed out random hops when they couldn't get the ones in recipe specifically developed by you (duh).

There was one good long-time bartender there otherwise service was bad. If you kept it simple with food it was fine too.

Oh well seems like an end of an era - which in the grand scheme of things is good.

 

John Harvard's Framingham

 

Thanks! I tend to run hop heavy on the menu these days (pale/IPA/DIPA) that are mostly modern interpretations although I do thrown in the occasional old school west coast pale/ipa for the long time regulars that still want a firm bitterness and clear beer.

 

The original BeerWorks near Fenway was ironically ahead of its time, the model they had in the early 90's is exactly what is popular today (it was more of a gastropub than the crappy pub it is today). In the early 90's their beers were great for the time and their food was great as well. People went to BeerWorks for their food and beer rather than go there simply because it was close to Fenway. I am going to guess that the success of the Red Sox was probably their downfall. They probably realized that with the amount of crowds coming to the area it really didn't matter what they had on tap or what they had for food they were packed.

Their menu was at least interesting back when they had the Mako Sharkbites. I went to the Lowell BeerWorks a few months back solely because I was going to a basketball game at the Tsongas arena and it was easy to meet our friends there before the game. I found it comical to see them trying to sell their beer to go as well as offering growlers. I'd love to understand what they mean by moving to a taproom setting vs a brewpub. I think they'd be better off focusing on improving their food first. Then focus on beer styles that aren't so polarized as IPA's. Produce a few decent beers like Hefeweizens, Pilsners, etc.. A decent group of beers with great food would work. Then focus on producing a few small batch IPA's that are actually good or just bring in other beers to supplement the in house beers. A lineup of a few core beers that hit the average consumer and then a few lines of decent local IPA's with great food would make a fairly compelling destination. Don't focus necessarily on the beer geek but focus on the beer geeks friends and family

 

Thanks for the update - look forward to a visit.

Frankly with the location (ever expanding UML & Tsongas Center events) most anything with booze would succeed there financially in that location. That said, a renewed spot could hopefully draw better in non arena & ballpark events - hotdamn it was empty many times I was in there.

 

I think the problem was that they thought anything with booze would succeed. I think it either has to be good food and good beer or it has to be a cheap bar to succeed there. They were in between, mediocre food and mediocre (at best) beer. I don't think college kids go for mediocre. I went to college there when the original Lowell Brewery opened (before it sold out to Boston Beer Works). The restaurant was a pretty nice place. I recall it being pretty packed all the time. When I went there about a year ago I was not impressed. I think they had also closed down the upstair bar area, my recollection was originally they had a small restaurant and then above the brewery you had a bar area with pool tables and maybe some arcade games. They also had a 3rd floor with mini golf or something. The original place had character, I even remember going to a beer festival there maybe in '95. That was long before the baseball field and just before the Tongas Center opened.

 

Hearing really great things about the beers at JH lately and I always enjoyed visiting in years past when we lived closer. I think I may make the trip down this week to meet my parents out there. Any list available of what's on? Also I always liked their oktoberfest and wold like to take some home to Portsmouth.

 

Went in for a visit to the "new" Lowell Beerworks (sorry - "BWX Taproom") last week. Remodel wasn't as extensive as I was thinking - they dropped a shipping container in the patio & added a fire pit, but the inside looks pretty much the same save for fewer TV's & all the taps are behind the bar now. Food menu is more small and adventurous. I didn't eat but what I saw looked good. Contender IPA was just meh & no comparison to what it used to be. The 1-hop beer was forgettable - so much so I forgot what hop. Also tried the Oktoberfest and it was fine - not great or bad.

I had many good times in the former iteration and so far I'm not really a fan of the re-boot. Admittedly it was time for a change though.

 

yeah it's unfortunate that ever since the Framingham brewer left (who created Contender) that beer hasn't been the same at all. Goes to show that a recipe doesn't necessarily work the same in different hands. Also agreed on the one-hop beer. I've stopped going.