Media & Press Kit
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Sarah Real, Owner & Head Brewer
Sarah has more than sixteen years of experience in media research and consumer insights having worked for brands like Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, Discovery, and Nickelodeon. She has extensive experience running qualitative and quantitative research, and leverages those analytical skills to help make Hot Plate a sophisticated, data-driven brewery.
As a craft beer consumer for almost twenty years, and a homebrewer for nine, she has closely followed the trends in this industry, and started to gain experience and recognition as she prepares to make the transition into running Hot Plate full time. In 2021, she was awarded a scholarship from the Pink Boots Society to attend an immersion trip in Yakima Valley, WA (one of the world’s largest hops-growing regions), and in 2022, she was the first-place winner for Casita Brewing Company’s Increasing Visibility campaign, for which Sarah got to scale up her award-winning Best Bitter recipe for commercial production.
Combining her technical knowledge with her passion for inclusivity, Sarah intends to answer the call for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the craft beer world.
Mike Dell’Aquila, Co-Founder & General Manager
An award-winning writer and creative marketer, Mike brings more than sixteen years of experience in content creation, creative direction, branding, as well as product management and sales. Having worked in industries as diverse as cable television, retail/eCommerce, and sustainability, he has worked for publicly traded corporations and small startups, and understands the challenges of cutting through an increasingly noisy marketplace, especially for resource-constrained organizations.
Like Sarah, he has been a craft beer consumer for close to two decades. Mike started homebrewing on a one-gallon kit back in 2014, and even though Sarah turned out to have the greater knack for recipe design, he also worked part-time for an award-winning homebrew shop located Brooklyn, NY, where we learned more about the art and science of brewing, and also supported their brew-on-premises program.
Leveraging his abilities as a storyteller, Mike has been documenting their journey on Instagram since 2018, and he has developed the Hot Plate voice, which is fun and approachable, and seeks to educate potential consumers and individuals outside of the current craft beer community through entertaining reels and posts.
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Sarah Real first fell in love with the craft beer community during a cross-country trip in 2005. Having recently completed her graduate program in telecommunications, she considered pursuing a career in the beer industry then, but not seeing herself reflected in the community, she ultimately decided to take a job as a media research analyst. However, beer continued to be a big part of her life, and during a period when she worked for Nickelodeon’s International Research team, she found herself traveling to pubs and breweries all over London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and other European beer capitals.
In 2017, she started thinking more seriously about making a big career change and finally pursuing the dream she’d deferred more than a decade prior. As she started learning more about brewing and the craft beer industry at large, the NYC Department of Buildings turned off the gas to our condo building due to a code violation. Refusing to give up on this dream a second time, Sarah went out and bought a hot plate, which is what she used to continue refining her craft and started designing her own recipes.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, Sarah and Mike were still living in this condo and still had no heat, hot water, and a functioning stove. Reaching their breaking point, they decided to use the extra time they had on our hands to work on a business plan, do some market research in order to determine where we might move and open a brewery, and continued to make as much beer as possible while sheltering in place.
After raising money through friends and family investors, and getting a significant economics incentives package from the City of Pittsfield, Hot Plate Brewing Co. broke ground on the project in July 2022 and plans on a soft opening by the end of 2022, with a grand opening to follow in early 2023.
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Berkshire County Forty Under 40, September 2022
First Place, Increasing Visibility Campaign, Casita Brewing Co., February 2022
Brewers Association Mentorship Program, Fall 2021
Technical Grant Award, Pittsfield Economic Revitalization Corporation, Fall 2021
Travel Scholarship, Pink Boots Society, August 2021
First Place, Berkshire County EforAll Pitch Competition, Spring 2021
First Place, English Beers, Homebrew Alley XV, March 2021
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When will you be open?
We anticipate a soft opening by the end of 2022, with a grand opening in early winter 2023.
Where are you located?
3 School Street
Pittsfield, MA 01201
What kind of beer do you serve?
We will have 12 taps, and we split those taps into thirds: the first four taps will be dedicated to classic European styles; the middle third will be focused on crowd-pleasers like New England IPAs and hazy Pale Ales; and the last third will be devoted to our experimental beers like our Chamomile Blonde Ale and Jalapeño Pale Ale
Do you serve any other beverages besides beer?
We are pursuing a Pub Brewer license, which will allow us to serve wine and cider in addition to beer. We made this choice for members of the community who might have gluten intolerance or otherwise don’t want to drink beer but would still like to join friends and family in our taproom.
Do you serve food?
We will be offering some snacks, but will largely encourage our guests to either order in from neighboring restaurants or even bring their own food.
How big is your system?
We have a 2-vessel, 7-barrel brewhouse along with six 7-barrel unitanks.
Where can I buy your beer?
We can’t sell any beer until we are fully licensed. After we are licensed and open for business, we will only be able to sell beer out of our taproom in the near term.
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