Yankee Brew News Archive

Mostly Dry Martha's Vineyard Joins Craft Brew Movement

Originally Published: 06/97

By: Kerry J. Byrne

Martha's Vineyard is the land of five dry towns and the Tavern Without Beer. Is the popular Massachusetts island ready for a sudden influx of good-beer drinkers?

Forrest Williams thinks so: "I walk into the post office and everyone asks 'When are you opening?' Everywhere I go people on-island are very excited."

Williams is brewer at City Ale & Oyster which, when it opens in late May or June, will be the only brewery or brewpub on Martha's Vineyard.

Williams and his partner, Bob Skydell, are not the only people with their eyes on the Martha's Vineyard beer prize.

Enter Dave Ciccolo. He planned to open Katy MacDougall's Pub around the same time. It will be located about a block from City Ale & Oyster on the same stretch of Kennebec Street (buildings on Kennebec are not numbered) in Oak Bluffs. Both are a short walk from the Oak Bluffs ferry landing.

Oak Bluffs, by the way, is one of two wet towns on the island, the other being Edgartown. T-Shirt Tavern, known in this rag as the Tavern Without Beer (I'm on a personal crusade to expose the place and sever its capitalist tentacles which took hold of me last summer and forced me to spend $32 for two T-shirts--and stand in line an hour for the honor) is in Vineyard Haven, a dry town.

Anyone who visits Martha's Vineyard knows it is a world unto itself. But Williams and Ciccolo are confident their ideas will fly in the land of the Tavern Without Beer.

"I think the island is just crying for good beer,'' Ciccolo said. "There's not much of it over here."

Katy MacDougall's Pub will feature traditional Irish session music and a beer list of some 50 to 75 bottles. Taps will be limited to about seven because of space constraints, Ciccolo said.

An extensive beer menu, divvied up by style, will be handed out with the food menu. (Let me now declare this Good and Just and Noble. As a beer drinker I generally feel slighted --and you should too--when I'm out to dinner and they hand me a wine list, forcing me to wade through a sea of ignorance in the form of a waitress who has no idea what beers are offered. Anyway...)

New England offerings will include bottles of Geary's Pale Ale and others, with Gritty McDuff's Best Brown and Tremont Ale on tap. The beer selection will include seven hefe-weizens and a section of lambics and Belgian/Trappist Ales.

Williams will offer eight beers in his microbrewery/restaurant; six served on draft and two cask ales served via hand pump. Among the cask ales will be Williams's hazelnut porter. When he served hazelnut porter at his previous job as brewer at Coddington Brewing Company in Middleton, Rhode Island, it was one of the truly great beers in New England. Let's hope he can reproduce its quality on-island.

When City Ale & Oyster opens it should also have a kolsch, copper ale, imperial stout, a weisse beer made with a traditional German weisse beer yeast, Oak Bluffberry, a blueberry ale, and a cask extra special bitter.

City Ale & Oyster beers will also be available at off-site locations after Williams gets settled with the brewpub operations.

"We bought a 1946 Ford truck for on-island deliveries," Williams said. "We're going to do one-liter bottles to start, then next winter start doing six-packs. I'm not sure how or where bottling will be done. It depends on (restaurant) demand here. If I can keep up with it, I'll do it here."

His beers may also be served on ferries to and from the island.

Williams said the restaurant will be "kind of like a new American oyster house" with "big portions and no garnish." Ciccolo, who named Katy MacDougall's Pub after his girlfriend (put that next to tattoo on the list of bad things to do), said his place will stand out from the mass of watering holes in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown serving bland swill.

"The thing that will make us different, we're not just jumping on the beer bandwagon. We will have a knowledgeable staff and only quality beers. We'll see how it goes and how the island reacts."

He and Williams believe the reaction will be favorable.

"The world is our oyster," Williams said.

Katy MacDougall's Pub can be reached at (508) 693-8887. The number at City Ale & Oyster (the DBA for Cottage City Brewing Company) is (508) 693-2626.

Pull quote:

City Ale & Oyster, the first island brewpub in Massachusetts, will offer eight of its own beers, including two cask ales served via hand pump.