LYNN — Kevin Moriarty opened Anonymous Brewing at 60 Main St. in Rowley in December after years of distributing beers brewed with partner breweries.
Moriarty — a Lynn Classical alumni who grew up in West Lynn — and the other co-owner of Anonymous Brewing, Ken Mulstay, spent years being “beer nerds” and visiting numerous breweries, eventually having the idea of opening their own spot.
“The brewery vibe calls to me,” Moriarty said.
Moriarty began brewing extracts on his own, then read “The Joys of Homebrewing,” where he said he learned a lot.
“There was definitely a lot of trial and error, truth, there still is,” he said. “I learned a lot from people in the industry. And most recently, I have learned the finer details from my brewing partner, Ken.”
One afternoon, when the duo was tasting the flavors and seeing the sights at the Bissel Brothers taproom in Portland, Maine, they thought that with some refinement, their home brew recipe could become something people could enjoy.
“The whole ride back, we started brainstorming and before long, we had started to formulate a plan,” Moriarty said.
They began with their basic recipe for red ale, brewing batch after batch and bottling in 500-milliliter Belgian bottles to share with friends and people they had met within the industry.
“With their feedback, that red ale morphed into WeyLey — a blend of the towns we currently live in, Weymouth and Rowley,” Moriarty said.
With a brew and a plan, the duo began sharing content on Facebook and Instagram, but didn’t want it to conflict with their day jobs. Both had colleagues and supervisors following them on social media and they wanted to remain anonymous, leading to the creation of the brewery’s name.
Since opening the taproom in December, the fan favorite brew is Squish, a uniquely crafted pale ale that showcases the brewery’s focus on process and technique.
Having what Moriarty referred to as a uniquely small brewhouse with 50-gallon kettles and just a few barrels of tank capacity, this allows them to experiment with the process with limited risk.
“For example, we can whirlpool at controlled temperatures to extract the desired aromas and flavors from our hops,” Moriarty said. “The scale also allows us to control the fermentation process so we can precisely coerce the desired characteristics from our yeasts. While the size of our setup limits our ability to package specific styles, it really provides us the tools to precisely craft our beers.”
If one of those styles is a hit and it can be efficiently scaled and reproduced by a partner, they will make them available in cans as well.
Anonymous Brewing has a 1-beer-barrels pilot system — which is the official unit of measurement of beer volume for breweries in the U.S. — at its location, but also partners larger batches with local breweries that are willing to scale their recipes to their setups.
The taproom is open on Thursdays and Fridays from 4 to 9 p.m., Saturdays from noon to 9 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m.
To learn more about Anonymous Brewing, visit its website at anonbrew.com.
