Haffenreffer Brewery

"The Haffenreffer Brewery at Bismark and Germania Streets was active from 1870 to 1964, and was the queen of the Jamaica Plain fleet of breweries. Rudolph Haffenreffer had been brewmaster at Burkhardt’s brewery and had married Burkhardt’s niece. He then left Burkhardt’s and started his own brewery which was to become the last operating brewery in Boston.

It was a 14-building complex with a tower building, main brewery, storage building, paymaster’s office, stables, and an extensive bottling plant, etc. A widely believed local rumor places a spout in the main brewery wall delivering free beer to any and all visitors. The buildings had slate roofs, one of which was an odd, trough-shaped, affair designed to catch and funnel rainwater to the power plant. Underground steam pipes connected many of the buildings, including Haffenreffers’s house next door at 21 Germania Street. This is a good example of the vertical and later horizontal brewery with the lower buildings and other efficiencies gained in that process. After closing in 1964 it was a storage warehouse including garages and artists’ accommodations as well. Now owned by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation it counts among its tenants several food operations and the famous Sam Adams Micro-Brewery that was started in 1988. Regular tours are conducted at Sam Adams and one can once again see beer brewing in Jamaica Plain in a building that just won’t quit."