First Course: Tree House Brewing
Inside (and outside!) the brewery that just took Saratoga's beer scene—and tourism industry—to the next level.
After flying in from a ski trip late Monday night, one of the first things I did on Tuesday was grab a midday beer. In the last week, sipping aprés ski brews on a patio has become somewhat of a daily routine for me, so it felt right to be drinking an Emperor Julius IPA in the sun at Saratoga’s Tree House Brewing, which officially opened to the public on Monday.
“We didn’t even announce that we were opening, and there was a line out the door,” one employee told me of Monday’s small but mighty crowd.
“There are some enthusiastic people in Saratoga,” confirmed Tree House CEO, founder, and head brewer Nate Lanier, who was pouring beers behind the bar in a Tree House Brewing hat on Tuesday. “We love the energy of the city itself, so we feel right at home.”
For being the mastermind behind a brewing behemoth with a cult following, Nate is pretty nondescript—I only knew he wasn’t a regular employee because I overheard a guy in the beer line whisper to his friend that he was the owner. When I relayed the message to my beer geek boyfriend, he said, “Yeah, that’s Nate,” as if the two of them were on a first-name basis.
It all sort of makes sense. Nate is a low-key guy that everybody knows who runs a low-key brewery that everybody knows. Despite not really advertising or even responding to media inquiries (I’d been trying to interview someone at Tree House about the new location for more than a year before finally pinning Nate down in person yesterday), Tree House has become one of the best-known breweries in the Northeast, and its taprooms have become bona fide tourist destinations. While “low-key” may not be the first word you’d think of to describe the expansive Saratoga brewery (which boasts a gift shop, liquor store, to-go counter, pizza window, 360-degree fireplace, several pergolas, and more than three acres of green space), I’d argue that it is in fact low-key in the sense that it doesn’t seem especially flashy, new, or out of place. The magic of Tree House is that you feel like the brewery has been there all along.
Part of that magic, I think, has to do with the ownership’s appreciation for the area the brewery is in. While Nate lives in Massachusetts, he’s spent a lot of time hiking in upstate New York, and has incorporated regional elements into the design of the brewery itself, including framed photographs of the Adirondacks. He’s privy to the culture of outdoor recreation in this area, and making the Saratoga location bike-friendly was important to him; outside the brewery, there are bike racks that can accommodate some 80 bicycles.
Then there’s the way Tree House is run. While the Saratoga location is new, it already operates like a well-oiled machine. The company is known for paying its employees enough to not have to ask for tips from customers, as well as for providing products that aren’t just high-quality, but consistently high-quality—the beer tastes the same every time you order it. While you can order full pizzas at the brewery’s other locations, currently, pizza is only available by the slice in Saratoga. That, Nate told me, is because they want to make sure they can meet the demand while maintaining a consistently high-quality product before they start offering full pies. In other words, Nate and his team know how to run a business the right way, and Saratoga is already reaping the benefits.
Ashlee Rose Hartley is a fellow Saratogian who felt the power of what Tree House has built here in the Spa City. “This place is going to dominate Saratoga,” she told me on Tuesday over a mocktail mojito she called “amazing.” While Ashlee and her husband, Charlie, were Tree House first-timers, I also spoke to some certified super fans, including North Greenbush resident Kaitlin Knight. “We used to drive to the Deerfield location on the weekends,” she told me, before looking around the new Saratoga location. “This is too good to be true.”
—Natalie