Ryan Cashman

As someone who enjoys a good beer, I’m incredibly happy with the trend towards “family-friendly” atmospheres that several breweries in the area are taking. A prime example is Stone Cow Brewery, which I profiled back in October. During our visit, my fiance and I noticed, and couldn’t help but smile at, the amount of children buzzing about the property. They were climbing all over the jungle gym, eating ice cream, rolling down grassy hills and pointing at the dairy cows in the distant field.

Of course, Stone Cow Brewery is situated on grand farmland in Barre, but there are more, smaller venues around Worcester County with open invitations to the beer enthusiast and his/her family.

Purgatory Beer Co. in Whitinsville keeps board games and puzzles in a corner next to the bar. River Styx in Fitchburg has indoor cornhole. Greater Good in Worcester has arcade games and coloring books.

This mindset is European in the sense that these companies and their patrons are not excluding youngsters from the experience of going out for a drink. If anything, they are setting an example for what responsible and enjoyable consumption should be. Having family around you almost forces you to think twice before ordering another drink. Usually, though, if your kids have joined up with someone else’s kids, as they so often do, you’ll be able to have a second drink, relax a bit and watch the children play, all the while enjoying the company of a newfound friend.

Back in October, the T&G ran a story on Matthew Zarif and his new brewery, Timberyard, in East Brookfield. Having made his brewing bones as a former owner of Stone Cow, Zarif seems to be cut from the same “family-friendly” cloth. His goal is to build a Timberyard family by encouraging families to come out and have a good time. Within the year, he is planning on building an outdoor beer garden, complete with children’s playset and homemade, non-alcoholic beverages that the youngsters can enjoy. This preview will be worth a drive out to East Brookfield in the spring.

Seeing breweries becoming meeting places for families gives me hope that we are raising a generation that will be more responsible and less foolish around alcohol. Of course, there are always those that abuse the vice, but the more we show young people that alcohol can be enjoyed in a responsible fashion, the far likelier they will be more mindful consumers.