A Wormtown Brewery Taproom Is Headed for Patriot Place

Dennis Colwell Architects concept rendering courtesy of Wormtown Brewery

Fans will be able to pre-game with Be Hoppy IPA—or something fresh and funky—before catching a Patriots game this fall. Wormtown Brewery is opening a second taproom later this summer at Patriot Place, along with a small-scale brewery, which will give the Worcester beer-makers the chance to get more creative.

Wormtown is taking over a Gillette Stadium-adjacent space where Maynard’s Battle Road Brewing Co. has operated a pop-up taproom—a “hop up,” as they call it—since October 2018. A year-round, permanent outpost for Wormtown, the new operators are expanding the space to about 2,500 square feet total, and adding an outdoor patio.

They are also installing a new, seven-barrel brewing system. At their Worcester headquarters, the Wormtown team brews everything on a 30-barrel brewhouse—which results in a lot of beer. The fully licensed Foxborough brewery will “serve as our much-needed pilot system,” Wormtown managing partner David Fields told the Worcester Telegram. “Everything we do is in 30 barrels-plus. We haven’t been able to play with sours; we didn’t barrel age until recently. We feel as though we’ve made a lot of cool, fun beers, but we haven’t necessarily been able to play around with small batch stuff on Shrewsbury Street.”

That means beer fans can expect to find core Wormtown beers, like Be Hoppy and Mass Whole Lager, on draft in Foxborough, but also new experiments, like a cranberry sour made with cranberries from a bog in town. The taproom won’t have a kitchen nor offer any food, but guests will be allowed to bring in their own food—sausages fresh off the tailgate, perhaps?—and order in from other Patriot Place restaurants.

In 2017, Wormtown announced plans to build an experimental brewery in Keene, N.H., but that project is on indefinite hold in favor of more local ventures, says Wormtown marketing director Katrina Shabo. The Foxborough opportunity is part of a larger change for the company: Wormtown is now producing the Battle Road Brewery brand out of Worcester, as part of a new contract agreement between the two companies. Wormtown has also signed on as the official brewery of the forthcoming Worcester Red Sox.

Fields is stoked to introduce the Wormtown brand to a new audience. More than 10 million people visit Patriot Place each year—not including those attending Patriots games and other Gillette Stadium events, according to the Telegram. “We’re going into one of the most well-attended sports venues that draws fans from all over New England and from all over the country,” Fields told the newspaper. “At a brewery, you can sell beer to go, so maybe those people will take a little piece of Worcester with them back to Green Bay or Philadelphia or Dallas.”

The Wormtown taproom at Patriot Place is planning a summer 2019 opening. In the meantime, the company’s Worcester brewery is open six days a week (closed on Mondays), with free tours offered on weekends—and Be Hoppy is currently on draft at Patriot Place’s new country bar, Six String Grill & Stage.

Wormtown Brewing, coming summer 2019 to 250 Patriot Place, Foxborough; 72 Shrewsbury St., Worcester, 774-239-1555, wormtownbrewery.com.

Wormtown Brewery taps. / Photo by Nina Gallant for “Wormtown Rising” / Photo by Nina Gallant for “Wormtown Rising”