BELLOWS FALLS-Another historic but long-empty building in downtown Bellows Falls will have a new life as 7 Balls Brewing celebrates its soft opening this coming weekend at 94 Rockingham St.
The brewery developed from years of home brewing by four local men: Scott Brandon, Steve Adams, Paul Lawrence, and Chris Sherwin, good friends since middle school. They graduated from Bellows Falls Union High School together but started home-brewing beer together only about eight years ago.
At first, it was all for fun and friends. Then their friends started telling them, “We really like this beer. You guys need to brew this commercially,” Sherwin said.
Becoming commercial brewmasters was not necessarily on any of their life to-do lists — all four all had run their own businesses, and all are now well into their 50s.
Sherwin is a well-known glass artist with a studio in Bellows Falls, while Adams and Lawrence work at Chroma Technology in Rockingham. Brandon has moved away from the area and is not involved with the brewery going commercial.
‘We want to give back’
Becoming a licensed brewpub was not necessarily the goal when the friends first started brewing.
“We’re at a point in life where we’re thinking more about retiring than starting a new business!” joked Sherwin. “We all have other jobs. We don’t need to do this.”
The three men agreed that the overall motivating force behind the venture is the “opportunity to serve and give back to the community,” Sherwin said.
Adams said that the brewing partners all clearly remember times when downtown Bellows Falls was struggling and filled with empty storefronts. They said they watched over the last few decades as people moved to the community and helped it get back on its feet.
They mentioned Robert McBride, who moved to the area from New York City and established the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project; Charlie Hunter, and Gary Smith, who helped create a vibrant live music, food, and arts scene; and Michael Bruno, who helped revive downtown buildings, businesses, and storefronts.
“They brought a good energy to Bellows Falls,” Sherwin said, “and we want to be part of that. As people who grew up here, we want to give back and help support our community.”
They have no intention of competing with local bars or restaurants, Lawrence said. In fact, he said, they are working with bars, restaurants and clubs in town to have some of the 7 Balls Brewing beers on tap.
7 Balls Brewing will have 20 to 25 seats, with some outdoor seating during the warmer seasons. The business will offer a limited menu of pizza and food from Jamaican Jewelz, but the brewery’s main goal is to offer several taps of excellent small-batch beers and ciders that patrons can purchase to take home by the growler.
“We don’t intend for this to be a place for people to come, hang out, and drink,” Sherwin said. “There are bars here in town for that. We won’t be open very late in the evening. We’re here for tasting and a glass of beer, then the customer can take home a growler of the draft they like.”
Vermont has numerous highly regarded small breweries, and people often travel to the state to visit them. Lawrence said that 7 Balls Brewing hopes to become one of the stops on those brewery tours, drawing more visitors into downtown Bellows Falls to the benefit of other businesses there as well.
It will be one of the few boutique breweries in the southeastern part of the state, and for many visitors, it will be the place to start on a brewery tour.
Revitalizing an art deco gem
A key part of the owners’ decision to help the community was picking 94 Rockingham St. as the location for the brewery. Once a vibrant part of the downtown village businesses, the building, except for a short time as a martial arts studio, has been mostly empty or used for storage for the last 25 years.
The unique art deco–style building, built in the 1930s, was originally a gas station next to the Bellows Falls Garage building.
The 92 Rockingham St. structure has in recent decades been a restaurant; at one time it housed Fat Franks and, more recently, the Shona Grill. It has now been renovated into a hair salon and art gallery, Studio 92.
Both buildings are owned and operated by Erica Daniels and Tim Wells, Studio 92’s proprietors.
From 1982 to 1995, 94 Rockingham Street was famous as The Real Scoop, an ice cream shop owned by Jim Mort and Lynn Dooley. Its chocolate banana flavor served there made a lasting impression on former patrons who have commented on various Facebook groups.
The Real Scoop, with its huge, dripping ice cream cone hanging on the front of the building, was an unmistakable landmark in the village for many years. The foam, fiberglass, and wood cone, according to old newspaper reports, was made locally and weighed some 300 pounds. It was removed in 1998, using the Rice Tree Service crane. It was sold in 2018 and may have a new life decorating another ice cream shop outside of Vermont.
Daniels and Wells upgraded and cleaned the building in 2024, including putting on a new roof, with the goal of renting it out.
“Eventually, one of the things we’d really like to do is to have a similar style beer mug built for the front of the building, complete with foam dripping down the side,” Adams said — a direct homage to the iconic but long-gone Real Scoop cone.
In their work on the building, the men found an original Real Scoop sign that had been used to advertise the ice cream flavors offered. The brewery will reuse the sign for listing their on-tap offerings.
A lengthy, educational process
Adams said that creating 7 Balls Brewing has “been an educational experience,” while Sherwin added, “and also a lengthy and thorough one.”
Lawrence said 7 Balls Brewing became a limited liability company at the end of 2024, and the partners have spent the past year working on setting up the brewery equipment and getting permits to brew and sell their products.
They used local businesses for all of the prep work, including hiring Vernon Temple to make their table and bar tops, K.O Electric Services for wiring, Floyd Lawrence of Floyd’s Plumbing & Heating for plumbing, and Jim Young for carpentry. They said they found that getting their wastewater permits has been the biggest hurdle in trying to open the business, a situation that may be due to a lack of state personnel dealing with the permitting.
“There is nothing like a flow chart that could show us how to go about the permitting process,” Sherwin said. “So we had to rediscover how to do this all on our own.”
‘Excellent water chemistry’
In their years of homebrewing, the three friends said they learned to brew dozens of beers, ales, and stouts, and they narrowed those down to the 20 they all agreed were the best.
The new brewery has a 3.5-barrel brewing system, allowing them to make around 105 gallons per batch. They have eight taps and will be offering around 20 beers and hard ciders.
One of the benefits of brewing beer in Bellows Falls is that the town’s water source, Minards Pond, “has excellent water chemistry and excellent water service,” Adams said. “We have to do very little to use the water in brewing.”
Unlike in many other parts of the world, Bellows Falls’ very clean and chemical-free water source provides a nearly blank slate for the brewing process, allowing the brewers a lot of variety in what they can brew with it.
The brewers noted that some brews, like Guinness, are dictated by the limits of the chemical quality of the brewing water where they are made. The excellent quality of Bellows Falls’ water doesn’t put that limitation on this brewery, Sherwin said.
“We can make excellent stouts, red and brown beers or ales, hard cider, lagers, IPAs, and more,” Adams said.
7 Balls Brewing will be open for holiday shopping in the village on Fridays, Dec. 12 and 19 and for the Festival of Lights on Friday, Sunday, Dec. 14, from 4 to 8 p.m. and hopes to have an official grand opening by the end of January. Visit 7ballsbrewing.com, where you can learn the story behind the unique name of the enterprise and find links to the company’s social media feeds.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.