As part of our “Meet the Team” series, we’ve been introducing you to members on our team that make it all happen! Today, we’re excited to get to the down and dirty of actually making the beer…good beer at that. In fact, the best. We’re extremely proud of the steps we put in place to ensure the highest quality beer production for all of our beers including our house beers as well as our brewing partners. To that end…have ya met Fred?
Fred Hamp, DBco’s Lab & Quality Assurance Manager became involved with DBco from his old friend Todd, our Head Brewer, from their days at Harpoon. Fred had been a stay at home dad for a few years and the timing was right for him to re-emerge into the craft beer scene at Boston’s newest startup. Fred has been with us since our building was a bit of a construction zone and he helped us design our QA program from the ground up (literally from the dirt floor!).
Fred’s love affair with brewing started long ago, fresh out of college. He hounded every brewpub and brewery in the Buffalo area until finally Tim Herzog of Flying Bison Brewery took pity on a him and let him clean kegs and access his brewing library. While there, Fred became committed to brewing professionally and saved his pennies to pay for the Master Brewers Program at University California Davis. After graduating, he took a job with Harpoon and did pretty much every job in the business until finding his passion for Quality Assurance and Control. After working with Todd at Harpoon, the rest was history!
When he’s not elbows up in beer, Fred loves to immerse himself in the craft beer culture. When we asked him his favorite beer, he said, “I think choice is incredibly important. As an example, who wants to listen to the same album over and over again? Sometimes you want speed metal, other times EDM, funk or classic rock. When I drink beer, I usually let the season/ time of year influence me. My favorite DBco beer right now is the soon to be released Baltic Porter. It is incredibly balanced and complex… a real treat.”
Todd’s background in beer started by walking into one of Boston’s premiere breweries 15 years ago and he landed a job on the bottling line. He worked hard, and his dedication paid off becoming Head Brewer for over ten years at Harpoon Brewery. Todd’s not one to brag about himself (or super wordy as you can tell!), so we did a little Q&A so that you could get to know him better.
The biggest update over the past few weeks has been our signage. We’re thrilled to finally get our huge Dorchester sign up on top of the building and our logo up on the silo. The Dorchester script was actually created by a local calligrapher, Jake Rainis, who did an amazing job! We also have to give a special shout out to 