The name Independent Fermentations Brewing is, admittedly, a bit long and awkward so feel free to call us IndieFerm. It is an intentionally generic name that isn’t meant to evoke any of the typical beer company marketing propaganda. It is our belief that quality beer and kombucha should stand on its own merits and doesn’t need to rely on contrived marketing schemes to get you to like it. You can think for yourself, you don’t need some beer company’s advertising department to tell you what to drink. That’s why our motto is “Think Independent, Drink Independent”. We are proud to be one of over 9,000 independent craft breweries in the USA.
IndieFerm grew out of Paul Nixon’s obsession with home brewing. In 2013, after two decades of amateur brewing, he began the process of converting his barn in Plymouth, Mass. into a small professional brewery.
Instead of spending his time looking for wealthy investors to fund a full-sized brewery like any sane person would do, Paul worked on perfecting his homebrew recipes. In April 2014 IndieFerm brewed its first professional batches of beer in the barn 60 gallons at a time. Starting in the basement of a barn with no rent and literally low overhead was a great way to get started but it was never meant to be forever. In late 2015 Paul quit his day job with the Army National Guard, cashed in most of his retirement savings, and IndieFerm moved to 127 Camelot Drive in Plymouth where we now also have a tap room and a home brew shop. We brew on a 2.5-barrel system that has served us well for 8 years. We have four 10-barrel fermenters and one 5-barrel fermenter.
In 2017 we also started making kombucha (fermented tea). We have gradually scaled it up and kombucha is now about 25% of our annual output. We sell about 300 barrels of beer each year and we are pretty much maxed out with our current equipment and space. In addition, Harper Lane Brewery brews their beer on our equipment when it would otherwise be idle. We had planned on expanding again in 2020 but then COVID-19 happened. We are starting to think about it again now that the worst seems to be over.
We self-distribute our beer in the Plymouth area and Cape Cod. Liberated Beverage distributes our beer in Bristol and Norfolk counties. We currently have about 80 retail outlets in addition to our own tap room. Please check the map on the “Find IndieFerm” page for restaurants, bars, and stores in the Plymouth area that usually have our beers and kombucha. And take a look at www.liberatedbeverage.com for a map of locations in Bristol and Norfolk counties.
There are plenty of “local” breweries but we take it a step further and use mostly locally produced ingredients. We use mostly Massachusetts-made malts from farms around the Northeast that share our ethic of keeping it local and independent. Most of our hops come from Massachusetts too but there are some varieties that we like that simply don’t grow here so we supplement with other sources when we need to. We also have our own hop farm with 400 hop plants in Plymouth, mostly Cascade, Centennial, and Nugget varieties. On average, our beers are brewed with about 66% locally sourced malts and hops. It costs us more this way, but it is worth it to keep the money local and support people who work and think like we do. When you buy an IndieFerm beer, you are also buying the hops and barley from local farms.
Help us fight the mono-culture and drink local.
Independent Fermentations 