It’s a quiet Tuesday afternoon at Prost! in North Hampton, when Chris Tynan snaps into action and does what he does best.
Honing in on a young customer scratching her head as she circles one of his dizzying displays of brightly colored IPAs, he makes his move.
“Can you help me? I know nothing about beer and I’m trying to get a four-pack for my boyfriend, I think he likes IPAs,” she asks.
With just a few simple questions, all in an unassuming manner, the co-owner of the specialty beer and wine shop sends the customer back out onto Route 1 with a smile on her face and a four-pack that even the most discriminating of boyfriends would be happy to put in their fridge.
Since opening Prost! in December of 2014 if you gave either Tynan or his sister Elyse Wilson a buck for each time they have handled a similar situation, they too might have had the kind of backing to join Jeff Bezos in outer space this week. It’s their continued sincere and enthusiastic approach to their customers, however, that really speaks to why the small specialty beer and wine shop continues to thrive in a retail space that has changed so drastically since they first opened their door at 44 Lafayette Road.
“It was definitely a different environment and even the format of the beers has completely changed,” said Tynan. “Everything was in 22-ounce bottles and if it was in a six-pack or a can people were like, ‘Nope.’”
Full Pours: Tilton Brothers Brewing quickly making a name for itself on Seacoast
Now Tynan hardly carries any bottles and instead of carrying brands from all across the country, there is a laser focus on the exploding New Hampshire and New England brewery scene. The retail market has exploded as well with supermarkets and convenience stores now carrying extensive craft offerings, not to mention the wealth of new breweries and their own retail arms, but still Prost! is coming off its best year ever. Sure, the pandemic and cabin fever helped, but it also may simply be that craft beer drinkers are an extremely loyal bunch who will invariably wander into, and return to, small, family-owned entities with great customer service.
“Most of the customers are regulars, and most of them we consider friends,” said Wilson, whose son Josh is the third friendly face behind the counter at the eclectic store which invariably offers a compelling soundtrack in the background.
“Some come in multiple times a week and some come in every day after work just to grab a single beer. We have just the nicest people and we are so lucky to have the customers that we do.”
“It’s a different business model,” Tynan added of the influx of larger chain stores. “They are more of a ‘you go in and you know what you want’ and we’re more of a ‘you come in here and we can help you decide’ type of approach.”
Customers are still free to break up four-packs and the popular Friday evening tastings, albeit without the free pizza for now, have recently returned to Prost! The store’s name is German for Cheers!, and a nod to Tynan’s longtime love affair with German beers.
You may even run into brewing royalty like Sean Lawson of Lawson’s Finest Liquids, who made an impromptu visit a few years back, or Brooklyn Brewery’s James Beard award-winning brewer Garrett Oliver, who did the same.
“Easily the best-dressed guy who has ever come in here,” Tynan added with a chuckle of Oliver.
Prost! also continues to offer a top-notch wine selection which Wilson oversees, but it’s clearly the frothier stuff that keeps this place humming and with Tynan’s unique and close ties with brewers and distributors far and wide, don’t look for that to change anytime soon.
“I didn’t really have any expectations,” said Tynan of his hopes when he walked away from his job in the financial industry to start Prost! with his little sister in 2014. “My expectation was to have people enjoy beer as much as I did. That was it.”
“It was hard in the beginning,” Wilson added. “We were trying to find our target audience, trying to get people to know that we were even there because we were just this little shop in this plaza that people drive past all the time, but don’t necessarily see what’s in there. So, it was very hard originally to get people in the door.”
It may still be hard to get “people” in the door, but the steady stream of their friends certainly have no trouble finding the place. Prost!
A Swell pairing
On a sweltering night last Friday in Newington perhaps there was no better place to be than in the air-conditioned tasting room at Stoneface Brewery slurping up chilled oysters on the half shell and washing it all down with Stoneface’s latest local collaboration with Hampton’s Swell Oyster Co., “That’s a Swell Gose.”
It’s the second version of the mildly tart wheat ale (4.2 ABV) that is brewed with whole oysters, shells and all, lemongrass and pink Himalayan sea salt. The two Seacoast purveyors first partnered on a gose in the spring of 2020 and then joined up again last winter on “That’s a Swell Stout.” The hope was to pair each release with a tasting event complete with Swell’s co-owners, Russ Hilliard and Conor Walsh, shucking oysters, but the pandemic kept that idea in its shell. Finally last Friday, however, those plans were realized and it was certainly worth the wait according to Walsh.
Full Pours: Hampton Beach and Brew hit the spot
“Stoneface has the most organized people we could work with and working with them and doing an event like this is a dream,” said Walsh.
Stoneface put both local oyster farmers to work during the brewing process, but there were perks – like munching on the beer-infused remnants from the wort.
“We were chewing the lemongrass and having the oysters after the boil. You boil everything in the wart to impart all those characteristics and you pull them out and they are just like a steamed oyster in New Orleans, but with a flavor combo you could never recreate.”
Sales have been brisk according to Leila Ghandi, Stoneface’s sales and marketing director.
“People are really digging it,” said Ghandi. “People are into New Hampshire and these are two businesses in their backyard collaborating. It has been great.”
Pronounced gose-uh, gose is a German brew that dates back to the early 13th century in the town of Goslar where it was brewed with the saline waters from the Gose River, which accounts for its inherent minerality which dovetails nicely with the briny oysters from Swell.
Walsh said he can not pick a favorite out of the three collaborations, but did confirm that all the oyster farmers he knows are huge craft beer fans.
“It takes a lot of beer to grow a single oyster,” he said with a smile. The Swell Oyster shack at 1 Ocean Boulevard is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m.
Hoppy trails to you
If you are like me and still have only checked off a few of New Hampshire’s 4,000 footers on your trail map, the New Hampshire Brewers Association (NHBA) has come up with a far more attainable hiking challenge, The Keep NH Brewing Collaboration IPA Release and Beer Trail. Instead of scaling 48, 4,000-footers, hikers need just hit 18 of the 27 participating breweries to qualify for the drawing of a NH Brewers Association swag bag chocked full with pint glasses, stickers, T-shirts, and a variety of brewery swag as well as gift cards. Three bags will be given out in total.
Taking the place of its annual brewers festival in Concord, the NHBA has teamed up with 27 craft breweries across the state to create 23 individual IPA recipes and a portion of the proceeds from every beer sold will be donated to the NHBA. The initiative makes sense on many fronts, says C.J. Haines, executive director of the NHBA.
“Not knowing what the guidelines would be, we developed another way to still have a fundraiser that benefits the NHBA, but also still gives people the chance to explore more of the breweries around the state,” Haines told Full Pours.
To facilitate the expense to breweries, the NHBA partnered with Milford New Hampshire’s Amherst Label which has done labels for Rising Tide and others, as well as The Maine Malt House, Crosby Hops and White Labs.
“They have all been kind enough to offer discounts and contributions to the project as well,” said Haines. “It made it easier for the brewers to take part in it because it didn’t cost as much if they had brewed it on their own.”
Suffice it to say, perhaps no one is more excited to talk about new initiatives like this one and a return to some kind of normal than Haines and the NHBA. Not only did the nonprofit see their coffers almost emptied due to a lack of fundraisers in 2020, the last 18 months have been unquestionably the busiest of times for the association. They were front and center advocating for personal protective equipment (PPE), small business loans, and pushing for breweries to be deemed essential when all the shutdowns began.
“It was definitely an interesting year after COVID and I think the significance of what we do from promoting the breweries to also protecting them from legislative or federal government stuff all kind of got highlighted,” said Haines.
Hikers can grab their beer trail card at nhbrewers.org and must complete their journey by Sept. 30th. To submit your completed trail, mail it to NH Brewers Association, PO Box 2216, Concord, NH 03301. Happy Trails!
Full Pours is a bi-monthly column that covers the craft beer scene on the Seacoast. Follow on Instagram @full_pours or on Twitter @BobAlbright1. Email Bob at ralbright33@comcast.net.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Be the first to comment