Buzzsaw to start brewing in Whitehall

Whitehall will soon be home to a second brewery as the Buzzsaw Brewing Co expects to start production this spring.

I first talked to Andrew Watkins and Quinn Bartlett back in 2018 when they were getting the Buzzsaw name out in the community by giving away homebrewed beer at events around town while working on securing financing and facilities. With that now in place, both are now working full time on building Buzzsaw.

Watkins and Bartlett have secured a 5,000 square foot space in a Whitehall office park that will be focused on production. The brewery has two 30-barrel fermenters slated to be delivered next month — they will be contract brewing their wort from another local brewery initially, with the intention of purchasing their own 30-barrel brewhouse in the future.

They expect to have beer in the market by June with a Belgian-style pale ale as their first release and flagship beer. The brewery will focus on Belgian ales and German lagers, with Bartlett, a homebrewer for the past five years, heading production.

“We’re trying to have a heavier push on volume than most craft breweries typically do,” said Bartlett. “A lot of breweries have a heavy push on style bandwidth with a rainbow of a menu, and we’re sort of doing the opposite, releasing one beer at a time.”

The production brewery space will likely have a small tasting room, but they are hoping to build out a full taproom at a more accessible location in the future.

“We are saving our cards for another location,” said Watkins. “We decided to do a taproom the way we want to do is worth waiting.”

Buzzsaw joins 2 Tones Brewing as Whitehall’s only breweries — 2 Tones opened a taproom in Whitehall last year.

“The city of Whitehall has been so great to work with,” said Bartlett. “We feel like it’d be in our best interest to open the taproom there.”