On my afternoon visit, the 450-space parking lot is near capacity. About half the license plates I see are from Massachusetts and Connecticut, not surprising since Tree House is located near the interchange of I-84 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. The remainder are from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Maine and farther afield. With almost 500,000 visitors a year, Tree House is one of the most visited breweries in the country.

Trying to conceal any deer-in-headlights look on my part while I contemplate joining the line, I strike up a conversation in the taproom with Kirsten Misiunas and her son, Jack, of Morris Plains, New Jersey. Both are line veterans and explain how things work. Pointing out her husband, John, who is still outside, Kirsten says he is about 20 minutes away from purchasing his beer. (When I check back 40 minutes later, he’s still not quite at the front of the line.)

A few feet from where we talk at one of the taproom’s long wooden picnic tables, people pick up tickets that show what’s available for the day and how many cans they can purchase of each variety. They mark their order and make their way through a line that snakes slowly between the taproom and a shop selling Tree House branded merchandise. The line continues around the corner, past the brewing tanks and eventually ends at the back of the building. There, patrons present the ticket to one of the 12 to 30 cashiers (the number depends on the size of the crowd) who run to fill the orders from stacks of cans in cases. Purchases get carried or wheeled to waiting cars (there is no consuming on premises, other than when the taproom is open.)

Daily limits for regular Tree House offerings like Julius, Doppelganger and Haze may be 24 cans per person, while special releases could be just six or fewer. “It’s all supply and demand. The harder it is to get, the more people want it,” Kirsten says. This afternoon, the Misiunas family is making a Tree House stop on the way to their annual vacation in Maine, but John and Jack sometimes drive up from New Jersey for the day. “Three hours up, three hours back,” John says.

For Laura Dalrymple of East Walpole, the time investment has to be quite a bit less for her to make the trek. Dalrymple describes herself as a “fan,” rather than “super fan.” She stops at Tree House when she and her family visit her in-laws who live about 10 minutes away. “My husband doesn’t like the line culture, he thinks it’s ridiculous. I usually wait until the end of the day. I’ll check the Facebook group and if it says 30 minutes I’ll say ‘OK, I can do 30 minutes.’ I can physically carry two cases to my car so that’s what I do.”

When the brewery began, operating in much humbler digs in Brimfield in 2012, line culture wasn’t much on the minds of Lanier or his co-founders Damien Goudreau and Dean Rohan. According to Lanier, “It’s kind of been this crazy effect where we opened our doors seven years ago, had five customers show up the first day and that number’s been multiplying basically ever since. We’ve just been trying to stay ahead of that curve, trying to make the best beer that we can and supply a reasonable amount of it to people who show up to the brewery.”

Lanier says that the brewery started out much smaller than is recommended for a commercial enterprise. “We began brewing five and 10 gallons of beer at a time, myself in my kitchen, and then moved into my co-founder Damien’s barn, where we resided for two, two and a half years. I brewed almost 600 batches in six months, which was one of the darker times of my life. But it got us off the ground.”

Eventually, Tree House upgraded to a five-barrel brewhouse, also in Brimfield. When they moved to a 10,000-square-foot facility in Monson with a 30-barrel brewhouse, things began to change for the company. “Once we flipped the switch on the larger brewery and started canning our beers, it all went haywire. In a good way,” Lanier says. In July of 2017, Tree House moved to its third home, a $2.5 million brewery and retail setup off Route 20 in Charlton. Since moving to Charlton, production has continued to skyrocket: 20,000 barrels in 2017, 45,000 in 2018 and a projected 60,000 barrels in 2019. “I think to get to where we are now as quickly as we have, we’ve had wild ambition and a work ethic that would make some people nauseous,” Lanier says.