By Sal Ghamo

Aeronaut Brewing Company. — Photo by Sal Ghamo

The idea breathes in every full glass of brew. The stills hide in plain sight, their responsible for the IPA’s dripping off your collection of empty glasses, and now the steel reflection on those stills bounces between your grip and drags your focus to the back wall. Nostalgia screams it’s light across a canvas, because where most pubs would have a cliche painting of some suds on the wall, this machine of an environment projects Super Mario onto it for the people to play. Live music, real music is everywhere. It’s a sound that can only very suitably be measured in RPM’s, because when you walk into Aeronaut Brewing Company you’re witnessing the engine of a brewery, you’re floating under the experimental hood, the laboratory for the machine.

I sat down with Ben Holmes along side two stout beers and an array of crudely sketched ideas for the day. The plans are scattered on drawing boards that are left out in the open for the people to see. Ben Holmes is one of three cofounders at Aeronaut. Ben went to Cornell studying physics. He spent a fair amount of time teaching physics in the Middle East in Qatar, after which he went to NASA to work for a year on Planetary Weather. Ben enrolled at MIT to study computer science, and left the institution twice by choice. The first time was to start a photo sharing startup with a friend and now Aeronaut co-founder Daniel Rassi.

He later went back to MIT to finish up some biotech material he was working on. In total, the Brewery was started by MIT PhD students Ben Holmes and Ronn Friedlander, as well as Yale PhD student Steve Reilly, and computer scientist Daniel Rassi.

The foundation and style of the brewery is partially dictated by the pre existing structure, which used to be an envelope company.

Ben briefly explained the history associated with the location. He stated, “There was a good period of time in the U.S. where if you got an envelope that stored an X-ray, a secure safe envelope, it was made in Somerville Massachusetts in an envelope company that was the size of ten football fields. The Ames envelope company was the largest employer in the entire city of Somerville. It disappeared 2005-2009.” Ben explained to me how when envelopes became less popular they tried rebranding as a marketing company, but that didn’t end up working out. Ben continued the explanation saying, “So it closed down, and all these beautiful empty warehouses that were used to process pulp into the paper that made secure medical envelopes became Aeronaut. Amongst 300,000 square feet of open space, Aeronaut was the last 10,000 to be filled.”

I wanted to know if the space and style of the brewery was on purpose. “It was on purpose that we would rent a 12,000 square foot warehouse, and open it up to people’s dreams, projects, and ideas.” Ben said, “It was also on purpose that it was divided down the long axis so that people could be close to the manufactory. If you look around you’ll see Barismo, Somerville Chocolate, and if we walk down a little bit you’ll see Aeronaut Labs, and you’ll find that it’s all open and transparent. On the other side you have projectors, and our white boards from our brewery meetings of the day. It was on purpose to go to a place that was exceptionally open and multi purpose.” The one component in this enormous project that the team did not have the ability to know was what the purpose of the all this space would be day to day, prior to it’s use. This concept actually applies to “the user experience” at Aeronaut. The brewery acts as the studio for the idea. People get to experience, for the first time, the skeleton of a brewery.

It’s a platform for creative people, and in a way, you can see everything being built. Ben stated, “It’s supposed to be looking fairly un produced, so that you can see the elemental bits and pieces that are actually doing the work.” Erica Jones, a team member at SCATV and also the individual in charge of Aeronaut’s Instagram page, has been a huge asset in building The Duck Village series (a pop up recording and broadcast venue for performing arts in the Aeronaut Brewing Company’s taproom at 14 Tyler Street, Somerville). Erica briefly commented on Aeronaut’s staff stating, “they give everybody a shot and continually give individuals a space and a platform to host their own events, have lecture series, film making opportunities, and even internship opportunities.” Aeronaut also plans to have open mic nights where people would perform in short sessions on Tuesday nights so they could get accustom to the sound system and the stage in general. Aeronaut isn’t just a music venue though. Ben commented, “You don’t just come here because of the act. [When you’re here] Aeronaut becomes a cultural institution where you hang out for the feeling of it, as opposed to a late night venue where you go there because of the act.”

This brewery isn’t just a sanctuary for scripted acts, it’s a platform for creativity that’s driven to bolster the progression of the community. It does this by giving passionate individuals a platform to work, it’s an opportunity to show their guts, an opportunity they may not have had elsewhere. Aeronaut is a functional bar for people, and you don’t necessarily know what that function is going to be until you walk through the door. Ben said this about the brewery, “People come to Aeronaut because that’s their community. We run the bar, we make the beer, we host the music, we create the art, we run the science lab, we host the manufacturers, we spend all our lives here, not exactly to create events, but more because it’s just, it’s our role in this community we have here. It’s part of how this culture works.” The rhythm that’s developed in this community is entirely organic, it’s a kind of free verse poetry. Other bar scenes might be the T.S. Eliot or the Robert Frost of Somerville, but Aeronaut is the Bukowski, never afraid to speak the truth, and never afraid to let people be that truth.

The team is composed of 30 plus individuals. They make the beer, run the bar, clean up at night, book the bands, because as Ben stated, “Everyone understands the idea is to foster collaboration. We’re all doing this thing for a higher purpose, which is to maintain a community space. We’re supporting musicians, supporting artists, supporting fun community activities, and creating opportunity that’s extremely open and extremely flexible.” On February 3 at 5 p.m. Aeronaut held a fundraiser called Warren Aid. An amazing community figure named Warren Goldstein-Gelb, that’s helped so many families and individuals in Somerville, suffered from a severe stroke. A friend of Ben Holmes named Chris Mancini, who runs a non profit company called Ground Works Somerville, was looking for a location to host a benefit event to help his family pay for medical costs and help him come back from his stroke.

The company decided to host the event at Aeronaut. They worked with Ben’s project manager Michael to build the event, and by the end of the event they had raised $20,000 to help Warren and his family. Ben said to me, “In this case, Aeronaut didn’t reach out to create that event, but instead made themselves available in a time of need. We facilitated with everything. We found community cooks who wanted to come, we used projectors we happened to have, we used the audio system that we built for bands, we used the bar we built for beer, the doorman we hire cause we host music shows, and in the end all that attributed to servicing a fundraiser event.” The days after the event the brewery was hosting filming interns, and the day after that they were hosting the release of a new chocolate Erica built from whole beans of cacao. Ben Stated, “People now identify that if you want to do something that’s not by the books in the city of Somerville, you do it in Aeronaut.” In other words, the style is idiosyncratic, fitting in the places they don’t necessarily “fit in”.

Ben introduced me to Aeronaut Lab, a science facility where the team studies and grows yeast. Ben told me a little bit about a recent development in the lab that pertains to community outreach. Ben stated, “We actually just helped a girl with a high school project. She was making pickles in a whole bunch of different acidities and she wanted to figure out which ones spoiled and which ones didn’t.” Ben also showed me the Tasting Counter, which is an innovative restaurant in Somerville that’s a part of Aeronaut. The restaurant was created by Peter Ungár, it holds a seating every night with nine different courses, and nine pairings of wine or beer or sake. It’s a fixed menu experience where they cook the food right in front of you.

At the end of the night Ben thanked the band Populace and Jennifer Matthews for their amazing performances. Ben also thanked everyone in the brewery for their support because that’s what Aeronaut’s about. It’s about the people all working together on a machine that’ll never find it’s final form because, it’d be a shame if it did.

You can watch the Duck Village Stage Sessions on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRDs5gK-I0rtAPEpYOP1MjaX-FzYFID_x

Weekly videos will be shown on the big screens at 10pm when they go live on SCATV channel 3.