Good things come in threes for Night Shift Brewing. The locally-based brewery represents the collaboration of founders and friends Rob Burns, Mike O’Mara and Michael Oxton, who started a nighttime homebrew operation in their Somerville apartment. Three years later, the trio has already grown out of one brewery space and has a new location in Everett where they serve up pours of their signature creative beers. In honor of their approaching anniversary (they have a brewery birthday at the end of March), co-founder Michael Oxton looks back on their humble, nocturnal beginnings and drops hints of what wild things to expect from Night Shift next.
Before they were Night Shift, Burns, O’Mara and Oxton were 9-5ers with a thirst for homebrewing, wherever they had space and whenever they had time. Their yield was so copious that the friends coordinated tasting parties and they even built their own kegerator to have beer on draft at their apartment. As Oxton says, “They were serious parties. I mean, they were parties. But, at the same time, we printed feedback cards and had little sample glasses. We’d make sure that there was some sort of sensory analysis involved so that we could really get feedback and figure out what was successful, what wasn’t and why. We took it more seriously than our desk jobs, so that was sort of a sign that we should leave our desk jobs and start a business.” In the first three to four months after launch, Night Shift had already made a name for themselves with unique, standout brews, like the Somer Weisse sour ale and Viva Habanera rye ale (made with habanero peppers. According to Oxton, “We were just crazy enough to do it.”)
In 2014, Night Shift secured a MassDevelopment Loan and debuted a brand new, expanded location to keep up with their rapid growth. A far cry from their Somerville living room, the new space boasts a little over 2500 square feet of tap room space and allows the trio to focus on making the user experience engaging and interesting. Night Shift continues to test the brewing boundaries with sour ales and fruit-forward IPAs. 2015 will see the return of their Ever Weisse in April, a sour ale aged with strawberries, kiwis and hibiscus and more from their Funk’d series, an exercise in brewing with 100 percent Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that lives on fruit skins. The brewers like Brett, as it’s affectionately known, because it lets them do what they do best: experiment. Says Oxton, “It allows us to make such a wide range of complex flavors in our beers. It takes a lot more time, a lot of research but it’s totally worth it when you have a finished product that’s just super funky, fruity and complex.”
With plenty of sour-ing experience under their belt and more wild things on the way, Night Shift continues to strive for one-of-a-kind brews while staying consistent with fan favorites. This year, they expect to brew close to 20 times as much as they did in their first year in 2012—so you’ll want to program their address into your GPS. If you haven’t been there already, head to their brewery on Tuesday, March 31st at 3:00pm as they celebrate their third year with a three-beer release party and cheers to many more years.
