Local Business Profile: The Thomas Hooker Brewery

Sad City likes local businesses. When we decided that we should spotlight some local businesses the first choice was easy; The Thomas Hooker Brewery. Being the week of The Thomas Hooker Parade makes it an even better fit to be spotlighted this week. Located on 16 Tobey Rd in Bloomfield, Thomas Hooker isn't technically in Hartford; but it is literally right over the border and it gave us an excuse to go hang out at a brewery.

We had been to the brewery before as they host an "Open House" every other Friday from 5-8PM. These are great events that attract lots of people. For $10 you get to taste as much as you want from selection of Hooker beers. On our most recent visit the brewery was offering an Octoberfest lager, an IPA, a blonde lager, a pale ale, and the winter seasonal beer, the Nor'Easter. When you leave the brewery you get a Hooker beer glass to take home with you. You used to get the beer glass when you first entered, but Hooker's East Hartford competitor, Ten Penny, complained to State officials that it was a violation for Hooker to give the glasses out. Hooker people told us in was not a violation of any type but acquiesced to use smaller plastic cups during the tastings.


Before the open house we met with Curt Cameron, President of the brewery. After being in the software business, then in liquor stores, Cameron bought the brewery in March of 2006. Today the brewery has 9 brew tanks with plans to add 8 more in the near future. Hooker has three head brewers as Cameron told us that he doesn't believe in just one guy calling the shots.

Brewing requires that the beer sits 14 days in the tank before being bottled; Hooker does make three high-end beers that sit in the tanks much longer and contain about 7-10% alcohol. As we were attempting to collect data on this trip we decided against indulging in any of these beers.

Hooker is distributed by Hartford Distributors, a Budweiser distributor. This means that Hooker Beer is delivered on Budweiser trucks and the package store owners order Hooker Beer through a Budweiser salesman. So while a local brewer is in competition with multi-national brewers, they are also dependent on the brewers for distribution of their product.

With the brewery doubling its size soon we asked Cameron if he was concerned about compromising the quality of the beer. He told us that while that was a concern, his greatest worry right now is meeting the demand for his beer. Currently Hooker is sold in six states, with CT, MA, and NY being the biggest markets.

Not a Watermelon in sight

On our hidden agenda while visiting the brewery was to find out if the brewery was sitting on a secret stash of their summer seasonal, the sublime, but getting hard to find, Watermelon Ale. Now before you tough guys go casting dispersion about a "watermelon beer" we can tell you that we here at Sad City consider ourselves "real" beer drinkers. You would never catch us with a hard lemonade or a lime beer. So when we were recommended the Watermelon Ale, we were skeptical to say the least.

When you open a Watermelon Ale it smells like a Jolly Rancher. Yet upon drinking, it tastes like a great smooth beer with just a hint of Watermelon. As it says right on the bottle it's "strangely refreshing". The more we drank it the more we liked it. It got to the point that all we were drinking was Watermelon Ale. Now having trouble finding it in stores as Fall arrives, we felt that the brew workers would point us to the secret stash and bestow upon us a large quantity of these masterpieces of brewing.

Alas, it seemed as the employees were onto our ploy. Likely others have tried it before. All employees stuck to the story that they stopped brewing the Watermelon Ale in August. We saw no evidence the beer anywhere except for a display six-pack at the merchandise counter. Sadly it looks like we will have to keep scrounging local package stores for the few remaining six-packs. Do yourself a favor and grab a few next summer.

As for now the seasonal Octoberfest is a great lager and the winter seasonal the Nor'Easter is another unique and excellent beer. The only way we can explain it is that it tastes like Christmas. All of the Hooker beers (and we have tried all except the "special brews") are high-quality beers that will please any beer drinker.  Sad City fully recommends supporting this local business by picking up a six-pack or stopping by an Open House. If you see any Watermelon six-packs just be sure to leave it behind and drop me an email.

Oh and Thomas Hooker Brewery will be at the Thomas Hooker parade this Saturday!