By Seth Daniel
Despite only having been open for four months, Bone Up Brewery proprietors Jared and Liz Kiraly said this week that they are already expanding their brewing operations to be able to produce more beer. The couple said the expansion is about a year ahead of schedule. Here, they talk with some customers last Friday in their taproom on Santilli Highway.
By all accounts, Jared and Liz Kiraly had been very conservative in their estimates about how business would go at their brewery in Everett – Bone Up Brewing.
They figured they would tread water and work out the kinks for a year – conservatively hoping to step up operations next summer.
Those estimates are now as stale as 2016.
This week, the brewery reported it is brewing at capacity since opening four months ago and seeing a steady stream of customers to its tap room on Santilli Highway, an area known as the Fermentation District.
“We’re brewing at capacity right now,” said Jared last Friday. “We have new fermenters on the way so we can increase the amount we brew by 50 percent each time. That means we’ll brew three times a week instead of twice a week.”
The Mom and Pop brewery – Jared and Liz are husband and wife – only opened its doors in late August and joined an exciting new area of Everett where Night Shift Brewery and Short Path Distillery are now established. Working with those other entities in the district, they have been able to join the momentum in the area.
However, they also have a great following of their own that has sprouted up since they’ve opened.
Last Friday, a group of adults dropped by to taste the latest brews on tap in the cozy taproom. They had come from Metro Rock and were Cambridge residents. They had been in several times after rock climbing.
“They have great beer here,” said one of the customers. “I like their snacks and the atmosphere is great. We come here every time.”
It’s customers like that who have prompted Bone Up to increase the hours of their taproom.
“We’d like to be open as much as possible, but we didn’t have the staff,” said Jared. “Two weekends ago we opened on Thursdays as a trial run and we will start opening on Thursdays in February or March.”
Added Liz, “We hope to keeping adding days one at a time until we find what people want to see.”
The idea would be to open from 3-11 p.m. on Thursdays.
Already, Bone Up has hours of Friday and Saturday, noon to 11 p.m. and Sundays, noon to 8 p.m. This week, they said they are adding two more tap lines at the room so they can have more variety for customers.
All of it has been quite sudden, the team said.
“The time has flown by and I think the plan was to look at this a year or two in,” said Jared. “We are conservative in our business plan. We didn’t expect to do this for at least a year. I’ve only been full-time here for two and a half months and Liz has only been full-time for eight months. We thought we would probably hire our first employee around four months in, which is now, but we actually have 11 employees. We have two cellar men and nine part-time workers here now.”
Liz said they also plan to start a cask program in a month or so for customers who wish to subscribe to that service – something common to local breweries where a customer gets special, small brews.
Both also said they are very excited to be growing in Everett on Santilli Highway.
“I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else,” they both said in unison.