About Us
Ethos
When we started this company, our goal was to keep it as straightforward as possible — to craft flavors and experiences that the people of Maine hadn’t experienced before, and serve them as fresh as possible. As the business has grown over the years, we are now able to share our beers with people in other areas — regionally, nationally, and internationally — but Maine always comes first. We strive to take care of those things closest to us, and let that radiate outward: our staff, our processes for making beer, our taproom and loyal customers, and the surrounding communities that support us. Everything we do is in service of these things, and we are nothing without them.
code of conduct
This will always be an active process.
We are a family-first company and believe that by fostering and encouraging an inclusive, safe, fluid, thoughtful, and collaborative environment; everything that makes us who we are will remain steadfast.
We want our supporters and customers, event attendees and volunteers, wholesalers and vendors, independent beer drinkers and food enthusiasts — anyone who enjoys the fruits of our labor and love — or not — to know that we put the wellbeing, respect, and safety of our Team above everything else. Basic knowledge here, but people shape their environment, and any communication or action that lessens the inclusive and open community that we have built, or in any way puts our Team in a state of question will not be welcome.
Our Team, and our culture, would not be what it is if we didn’t practice what we preach.
We want to share with you the things that we love most. We welcome you. We welcome any individual regardless of race, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, and sexual orientation.
HISTORY
In the beginning
Bissell Brothers was conceived in November 2011 by brothers Noah and Peter Bissell, in response to Noah’s homebrewing obsession, and Peter’s interest and burgeoning experience in entrepreneurship and marketing.
The brothers, who grew up in Milo, a small town in Central Maine, had no experience of any kind in commercial brewing or manufacturing, but they saw a hole in the market, both in types of beer, and ways to sell it, that was untapped in Maine, and spent the next two years on a crash course of personal and professional development to bring their ideas to fruition.
The brewery sold its first kegs of The Substance Ale at The Thirsty Pig, where both brothers had worked during the company’s inception, on December 7th, 2013.
Changing people's perceptions
The realization that they were not alone in their desire for something new and different became immediately apparent, and the city was swept up in a fervor over The Substance Ale. Cans soon debuted in February 2014, and the stage was set for a new type of sales model in the Maine beer world.
In April of 2014, the first Bissell Brothers taproom opened at the brewery, located within the fabled Maine brewery proving ground of One Industrial Way. Though small, no detail was left out of the experience, and the on-premise experience quietly grew to a fever pitch. By summer of 2015, Bissell Brothers, together with several choice mobile food vendors, and in tandem with numerous other beverage producers in the same building and immediate vicinity, had built an experience that couldn’t be ignored, driven by Noah’s development of beers that would forever change the industry in Maine, such as Baby Genius, Swish, Lux, and Reciprocal.
Challenging the status quo
The team was blessed by the ability to acquire several other units in their multi-bay building, but they knew it wasn’t enough. Just as soon as they had settled in, Bissell Brothers began searching for a larger home.
They found it at a site just as unlikely as the nondescript industrial park they had helped transform into a beer and food mecca — a largely abandoned waterfront site that was once home to the Maine Central Railroad. The audacious developers had a vision that matched Bissell Brothers’ needs, and a deal was struck. After constructing their new brewery and tap room in a 100-year-old former railcar repair building and completing the move from Industrial Way, the new Bissell Brothers brewery and taproom opened to the public on June 4th, 2016.
EXPANDING BEYOND PORTLAND
The innovation didn’t stop with the beer and the taproom — In the fall of that same year, original employee Josh Schlesinger broke off from the company to launch the group’s boutique distributor, Sleek Machine. This move provided the company with a high degree of flexibility in getting their beer to the places that mattered most to them, as well as bringing in friends’ brands from outside Maine to create new beer experiences in Portland and beyond.
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