Category: Food

The Packie to celebrate six years in business with new beer festival

By Mya Blanchard

listings@hippopress.com

To celebrate The Packie’s sixth anniversary, owner Jon Pinches will host a beer festival on Saturday, July 1, from noon to 4 p.m. at his Hooksett location, for local craft breweries and eateries to showcase their brews.

Admission is free. The day will include food trucks, games, raffles live music and, of course, beer samples from local brewies.

The idea to establish what is now The Packie (a Massachusetts slang term for a package store — a place to buy beer and wine) came from Pinches’s girlfriend, now wife, Sarah.

“We’d been in some beer stores up in Canada and she thought it would be a really cool idea down here. … I’d been going to those stores my entire life, so it hadn’t really occurred to me that those were unique at all until she pointed it out,” Pinches said. “The surrounding states were going through big craft beer booms and New Hampshire was kind of lagging behind.”

Pinches said his passion for craft beer stems from his college days studying business at Arizona State University, where he would frequent the now bought-out Four Peaks Brewing Co. in the city of Tempe.

After a relationship ended while he was working at a Chili’s in Wyoming, he began looking for managerial positions at other locations, eventually finding himself in Massachusetts.

“I was the front-of-house manager as well as backhouse for lots of different places and got introduced to what was going on in Mass. craft beer, and just loved what I was seeing,” he said. “That’s where I got the name [The Packie], from living in Mass. for several years.”

By the time Pinches lived in Manchester, he felt New Hampshire was ready for a craft beer boom of its own.

“I decided … we’d better get on it, and the timing was perfect,” he said.

The Packie, which sells craft beer, cider and mead, held its grand opening in July 2017 and moved to its current Second Street in the summer of 2020. About two and a half years later, Pinches opened the second location in Hooksett.

“It was always part of the five-year plan … [and] I figured by this point we would be ready for it, so we really wanted to hit that goal.” Pinches said of opening a second location. “We were a little worried with the pandemic or at least coming out of the pandemic … because if you own a to-go beer place then the pandemic wasn’t good for you and you weren’t running properly. But now that we’ve come out of it, sales have started the other way … [and] it still seems like the right climate, and we needed the extra revenue from a second place to be able to keep surviving. If you’re not growing, you’re stagnating.”

In past years, The Packie’s anniversary has been celebrated with smaller-scale celebrations. Three or four different breweries would be invited and given a two-hour time slot to showcase their beers. This year, eight breweries and one meadery will be present, each likely bringing two beverage sample options.

“We always want to celebrate the anniversary. We’re so enthused and just grateful for what our customers have done for us,” Pinches said. “If this festival does well for itself, which I think it will, then yeah, absolutely every year we’ll do it.”

The Packie’s sixth anniversary beer festival
When: Saturday, July 1, noon to 4 p.m.
Where: The Packie, 88 W. River Road, Hooksett
Cost: Free admission
Visit: thepackienh.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Hollis Strawberry Festival returns for 76th year

By Maya Puma

listings@hippopress.com

A celebration of strawberry crops and farming in New Hampshire more than 75 years strong, the Hollis Strawberry Festival is back, taking place on Sunday, June 25, on the Hollis Town Common. Traditionally held on the last Sunday in June, the festival attracts hundreds of people who will come together to enjoy homemade strawberry shortcakes featuring local strawberries, with added choices of local ice cream and hand-whipped cream. The event had a successful comeback year in 2022, the first festival to be held since the pandemic hit.

“It is hugely popular and people come from Mass. and southern New Hampshire. Strawberry lovers from all around come,” said Cathy Gast, publicity chairwoman of the Hollis Woman’s Club.

According to Gast, the festival began in 1946 as a fundraiser for the Town Band, which would perform its spring concert. The Woman’s Club, she said, joined in on the festivities in the ’60s to sell strawberries and strawberry desserts. Today the festival is a joint fundraiser for both the band and the Woman’s Club, which gives out three scholarships per year, two of which — each for $1,000 — are awarded to graduating seniors of Hollis-Brookline High School.

“Last year we grossed over $12,000, so that’s a lot of strawberry shortcakes,” Gast said.

The strawberries themselves, she said, come from local farms in town. Two days before the festival, community volunteers will pick up the berries and hull, wash and prepare them by slicing and putting them into bowls to be sugared. In total, there are 250 quarts of strawberries to go through. The ice cream is homemade and is from Dr. Davis Ice Cream in Pepperell, Mass.

On the day of the festival, the Woman’s Club organizes an assembly line to build shortcakes. People have the opportunity to build their shortcake with a combination of any of the ingredients.

“Everything is homemade — the ice cream, the shortcake, the whipping cream — and they give a really generous portion.” Gast said. “We have a row of people whipping through this whole process and our shortcake is a special secret recipe.”

The family-friendly event will also feature local craft vendors, face-painting, a live performance by the Hollis Town Band, and children’s games, including a Midwestern tradition known as “pocket lady,” in which a lady will be wearing an apron of pockets filled with toys and trinkets. In exchange for 25 cents kids can pull a toy out of one of the pockets at random.

Hollis Strawberry Festival
When: Sunday, June 25, 2 to 4 p.m.
Where: Hollis Town Common, Monument Square, Hollis (in the event of rain, the festival will be held inside Hollis-Brookline Middle School, at 25 Main St. in Hollis)
Cost: Free admission and parking; all strawberry treats are priced per item
Visit: holliswomansclub.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.