Since Sam Dibble founded New City Brewery in 2013, his company’s slogan has been: “Our Roots Run Deep.” In part, that’s a testament to the brewery’s local commitment to Easthampton — a city whose drinking water was judged best in the U.S. at a national conference in 2015, and whose historic mill buildings lured Dibble, a carpenter and a mason by trade, into renovating a high-ceilinged, 8,000-square-foot space at 180 Pleasant St. into a 30-barrel brewery and taproom.
But the slogan also speaks to all of the hours Dibble has spent up to his elbows in ginger root. Two or three times a month, Dibble and his team wash, peel, grind, and steep truckloads of fresh ginger to make the brewery’s flagship drink: an alcoholic, Jamaican-style ginger beer. “Bursting with the aroma of fresh ginger, with an effervescent bite and a clean, crisp finish,” reads the brewery’s website, “New City Ginger Beer has subtle notes of tropical pineapple and citrus that complement its distinctive zip of ginger, with a slight hint of molasses.”
This fits nicely into Dibble’s brewing resume over the past 10-plus years, which has taken him through jobs brewing not only beer, but kombucha and mead. New City Brewery also works from a portfolio, compiled by Dibble and his coworkers over the years, of roughly 60 beer recipes.
“Part of the joy of New City, for me and our brewers, is that we like to keep things fresh and rotating all the time,” Dibble says. “We have a core eight or 10 beers that we constantly rotate on tap, but we also dig into the portfolio all the time.”
New City has just commissioned a new 10-barrel brewing system, Dibble adds. This will be the brewery’s third system, one of which will remain dedicated to brewing ginger beer and a relatively new addition: the New City Mule, made with lime juice. This expansion will also allow New City to add two new tap lines in the taproom, for a total of 10 beers on offer each day.
For the On Tap Festival, Dibble will likely bring Ginger Beer and the New City Mule, but he is also considering two other bestsellers: the Minuteman Pale Ale and the Pioneer Valley Porter.
“This area has such a great number of awesome local breweries,” Dibble says. “We want to add to it, rather than just becoming part of the noise. So we’ll be bringing beers that are unique to us, and have been really popular in the taproom.”
Dibble is planning some seasonal beers for the fall. Recipes like his Microburst Imperial IPA and Fenway Froth — a single-malt, single-hop session IPA — have also proved popular. New beers appear regularly at the Easthampton taproom, which also boasts an outdoor beer garden open seven days a week, plus a food truck four nights a week, live jazz every Thursday, and acoustic bluegrass every Sunday.