Startup Star: Frogg Brewing

Visiting breweries, both near and far, had become a favorite pastime for Stephanie and Michael Guitard. The couple were at a craft beer festival in the fall of 2017 when Michael suggested opening their own brewery. Stephanie thought he was joking.

“A year later, we opened” in Marlborough, she says.

From the beginning, the Guitards, along with partner and brewer Alex Rice, envisioned a brewery that not only provides good beer, but an experience where patrons could chill, meet their friends and make new ones, and, as Stephanie says, “Leave the drama at the door.”

With that model, Frogg Brewery has gone, well, swimmingly.

The brewery’s name sprung from Michael’s verdant imagination. “He thought it would be a fun name,” Stephanie says, and he was right. Frogg Brewery playfully names its beers, such as Hop Hopper, an IPA, and Frogg’n Blueberry Stout, and customers started showing up with frog knick-knacks to decorate the space.

So far, their most popular year-round beer is the “F Bomb,” a double IPA “we have to brew all the time,” Stephanie says, and the summer favorite is the “Frogg Splash,” a wheat beer brewed with watermelon-flavored Jolly
Rancher candies.

The business has been steadily growing to the point Frogg Brewing is in the process of expanding into a larger facility along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey. But their new brewery will still be the same size—a three-and-a-half-barrel system—as their original. The extra space will be used to enhance the experience for guests.

“It will be a bigger space, hopefully some space for weddings, parties, and more space for people to just come together and hang,” Stephanie says. “Any money that we’ve been making, we’ve put back into the brewery. We don’t owe anyone anything, and we hustle.”