Gambrills’ Pherm Brewing Co. — Pherm being a portmanteau of “fermentation” and the traveling rock band Phish — is celebrating five years in business on Tuesday.
Henry Jager, 38, an Anne Arundel County native and huge Phish fan, and his wife, Maurirose, 41, started the enterprise in December 2020. They pride themselves on their rotating menu of seasonal beers of many types, as well as community involvement and collaboration with other local businesses.
One such collab earlier this year was with Annapolis creamery Always Ice Cream, on an ice cream-inspired beer; a portion of the proceeds went to the Anne Arundel County Public Library Foundation. Another was a red IPA that benefited the Hemophilia Society of Maryland.
“Being a part of our community, in the backyard sense, but also in the broader Maryland community, has really been important to us,” Jager said. “The goal is to have a voice and to be able to contribute and give back, and everything else will [fall into place].”
Jager looks at the brewery’s 200-person tasting room as a community hub, a place to host live music, an art marketplace for local artists — and, of course, a showcase for some of the brewery’s creations. Jager says he has had an interest in beer-making from his early 20s, and the creation process is his favorite part.
“I swear, I don’t know what it is, but there are some times I think that I’ve hit a home run with a beer, and people are [only] like, ‘It’s good.’ And then there are other times I’m like, ‘I don’t know about this one,’ and people just go nuts for it, and it keeps me humble, keeps me excited,” Jager said. “The ice cream one, for example … How am I going to do that? Have it be a drinkable beer that people want more than a 5-ounce sample? … Finding that fine line of not going too crazy, too far out there, but also keeping it approachable, that’s a challenge, and it’s something that is definitely fun and I enjoy. It keeps it interesting.”
He started with 5-gallon jugs in his garage and eventually made it to full-blown competition. At 24, he won a gold medal for a honey beer at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, he said. He got a job at a brewery in Boulder, Colorado, where he met his wife. He came to realize, though, that he wanted to go home and start a family. He says he spent some time at Heavy Seas Beer in Halethorpe. He would open a brewery with some friends in Falls Church, Virginia. Then he got the itch to do something in Anne Arundel County. Things were coming together in 2019, but then 2020 happened.
“The business plan had this community hub, this kind of event space, if you will, and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. Are people going to be allowed to come here when we open? Are people going to be comfortable coming here? And how can we make sure they are?’” Jager said.
Amid the pandemic, they began canning sooner than planned.
“All of a sudden, we launched into the canning process,” Jager recalled. “And we had to figure out how to properly fund that and receive the canning line and jump into that that much sooner, which also requires more staffing and more space.”
Jager credited the Anne Arundel County Economic Development Corp for helping the business during the pandemic.
“AAEDC was proud to support Henry and Mauri as they launched Pherm in 2020 and to provide financial assistance through the VOLT Fund during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said AAEDC COO Wes MacQuilliam in a statement. “Pherm’s continued growth reflects their dedication and resilience, and we’re grateful for the role the business plays in strengthening both our local economy and the Anne Arundel County community.”
Five years later, those restrictions are a distant memory, and the business has been able to fulfill Jager’s original idea. The brewery held its anniversary celebration just before Christmas and launched a hazy IPA alongside it called “Phavorite Melodies,” named for a lyric in the David Bowie song “Five Years.” The brewery’s website describes it as having hops “Riwaka, Strata, Amarillo, and complemented with Sour Tangie Cannabis Terpenes,” though importantly, it does not have any THC or CBD in it.
“Moving into the future, [I want to see] us being able to still have a positive impact, be a positive place for people to come together, a continued organic growth in that sense,” Jager said. “We love being here, right in Gambrills, Crofton in Anne Arundel County, and [want to] continue what we’re doing and keep making people happy.”
Forward Brewing in Eastport also celebrated its fifth anniversary this year.
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