Lower Forge Brewery

Lower Forge was originally the nickname of Washington Furnace, a lost town in the Pine Barrens where the ruins of long-forgotten industry have been swallowed by the forest. It's a place to explore the the things that built our area and our town, past history that was forgotten under the development and modern hustle that blankets New Jersey. For us, our two passions to slow down the modern world were exploring the forgotten towns of the Pine Barrens like Lower Forge - and homebrewing various styles ranging from the traditional to eclectic. When Medford fell on hard times, our founders were part of a group that helped change the idea of what should be in our downtown - and the idea to build Medford's first craft brewery was born. We worked for years to overturn ordinances and local laws that dated back to Prohibition, and campaigned to have our town leaders update restrictions that made it impossible to build something new in our town. Finally, in 2014, after a year and half of hard work - we were able to secure our location on South Main Street and begin building a craft beer brewery. We still had a hard road of sometimes working with and sometimes fighting our town to build the brewery that Main Street needed - and on April 15, 2016 we became Medford's first fully licensed brewery and sold a growler to one of our Main Street neighbors as our first sale. Small events followed, and finally we held a special event on May 12 to welcome members of our Committee of 250 - a special group that helped us open and acts as our inner circle of fans and friends. One week later, we held our Grand Opening during American Craft Beer Week on May 19, 2016. Since then, we've rapidly grown and begun distributing to accounts both local and as far away as the New York city area. We've hired help to introduce new visitors to our beers in our sampling room, and doubled capacities in the brewery to make even more of our great brews. Now, we're approaching our first anniversary and have passed milestones we didn't expect to hit until our second year - and we're just getting started.