In less than a decade in business, Nathan Sanborn has modified, disregarded, or completely shredded his business plan, all while trying to keep up with the whipsaw machinations that have been craft beer of late. Throughout it all, the founder, co-owner, and director of brewing operations at Rising Tide Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, has focused on quality about all else.
That sounds quaint, or like something that every brewer should say, but Sanborn and his brewery walk the walk, and it’s one reason that as Maine’s beer industry has grown, they’ve managed to grow and thrive in a crowded, often-focused-on-flash-in-the-pan market.
“In the grand scheme of the third wave of craft, we’re Old School,” he says. “When we started, there were maybe thirty breweries in the state, and now we have 130. Back then, there was a focus on your core beers, the ones that anchored your portfolio. Today we’re doing that, but we’re also producing a lot of one-offs. We need to balance between those things.”