It’s Friday night, you’re hanging out with friends, there’s live music, for dinner you are eating pizza and drinking craft beer. Could this friday get any better? How about if you were at the brewery that brewed the beer you are drinking and the pizza is free? Thats a pretty good Friday evening.

I just described a Friday night at Funky Bow Beer Company in Lyman, Maine. Between 4:30 and 9pm every Friday night the brewery comes alive with the sound of live bluegrass music and people having a good time. There is brewery fresh beer flowing, growlers being filled and pizza made with spent grain from the brewery being cooked in a wood fired pizza oven.

After seeing a photo on Facebook of a pizza coming out of the oven I thought I’d reach out to Paul Lorrain at Funky Bow and find out about Growler Night. These Friday shindigs out in Lyman draw up to 250 people for growler fills, pints and free pizza. Paul tells me that on a friday evening they cook and serve 94 pizzas and they are all gone by 8pm, thats 94 pizzas in 3.5 hours.

A little fun with math

94 pizzas per week x 52 weeks a year = 4,888 free pizzas given away in a year.

4,888 pizzas cut into 8 slices each is 39,104 slices given away in a year.

That’s a lot of pizza.

Paul also told me that Growler Night is open to anyone and very family friendly, last week there was a dedicated picnic table for the kids covered in coloring books and they were making sand castles out of the packed sand floor of the greenhouse where the event is held.

The first pint costs $5 and that includes a pint glass, for $20 you receive 5 chips (drink tokens) with the brewery logo on them. Week over week you bring back your pint glass and turn in chips so pints cost $4, pair that with live music and free pizza and you’ve got dinner and a show on the cheap.

It’s a nice thing that’s not often found, something free. For a beer drinker at the brewery on a Friday night it’s great to have food available, and whether intentional or not, for some of the community who might not have the budget to choose between beer or food during the week it’s a chance to have a $4 pint and feed the family for free.

While I had Paul on the phone he told me about some other Funky news. The brewery has ordered 2 new 60-barrel fermenters, they are just coming off an expansion two months ago that doubled their capacity and they are doing it again. Funky Bow is adding to their can lineup, once they get packaging approval for their Midnight Special Coffee Porter and Panama Red Ale, allowing them to do variety packs in the near future.

On December 12th Funky Bow will be releasing their special Christmas beer, Santa’s Sack, a bourbon barrel aged red ale. The beer will be on tap at the brewery, sold in wax dipped 32oz howlers (growlers) and a few kegs may make it out to select establishments around Maine. On December 17th, Santa’s Sack will be having a special release at The Great Lost Bear in Portland.

Pizza, Beer, Bluegrass. Time to get the Funk out and head to Lyman.

Cheers!

Chaddah

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