Take a Trip to This Stunning Timber Frame Brewery

The combination of outstanding craft beer and an impressive timber frame serve up some seriously good times at this New York brewery.

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A view of the front exterior.

Written by Katherine Owen

Photography by LaChapelle Photography, Courtesy Druthers Brewing Co.

At Druthers Brewing Company, a seasonally inspired menu of craft beers and crowd-pleasing bites awaits visitors at all five of the beer maker’s locations spread out across New York’s capital region. But head to their place in Clifton Park, which opened in 2022, and you’ll see why they describe it as their “most ambitious location to date.”

Contained within a Douglas fir timber frame from New Energy Works with 541 timbers from Fire Tower Engineered Timber, the European-beer-hall-inspired space is intended to encourage guests to linger.

“If you’ve ever seen pictures of Oktoberfest, it’s like that – very open, picnic-style seating and an energetic atmosphere,” explains architect John Paone. “But the design itself also hearkens back to when Clifton Park and the surrounding towns were first developed. It was a farming community, so we wanted to nod to that.”

A large barn with a gambrel roof adds undeniable farmhouse style, while a modern pavilion provides additional shelter in the manicured courtyard. But it’s not just designed for ambiance — impressive feats of engineering are at play everywhere you look.

“One really cool thing in the pavilion is we’ve got these 10-by-16-by-48-foot-long rafters that are continuous,” explains Owen MacDonald, the head of New Energy Works' East Coast timber frame division. “Those are probably the longest continuous rafters — in solid timber form — that I’ve seen put in a project since I’ve been with the New Energy Works team. Normally, once you start going that long, you get into the glu-lam territory.”

Owen explains the structure is strategically designed to shed large snow loads; the upper roofs of the main barn dump all of their snow down on top of the lower shed roofs. “There are really, really large loads in those exterior trusses,” Owen says. “We have 40,000 pounds of tension going through the bottom cord. If you think about how many cars that would be — that’s basically 20 little sedans.”

John, who, along with builder Munter Enterprises, brought New Energy Works onto the project, emphasizes the feat:

“I think a lot of people look at timber frames and they think they can just go cut a tree down and put it together. But it’s actually an extremely complicated process that now relies on modern equipment, modern software and modern technology to create this old-school look,” he explains. It’s worth it though, to get the vibe just right:

“It helps create the feeling that the owner was looking for: a place to come, stay, relax and enjoy yourself,” John continues. “The owner knew what he had was special, and he didn’t hold back. And it’s obvious when you stop by there on a summer night.”