Powder Hollow Brewing Company Opens at Yankee Candle

 Powder Hollow Brewery, which opened six years ago in the Hazardville section of Enfield, Connecticut — is opening a brewery in the former Chandler’s Restaurant at Yankee Candle Village in partnership with Yankee Candle and Hillside Pizza.

The tentative opening date is Sept. 11, said Powder Hollow owner Mike McManus.

“When we found the building, we thought it was a perfect match and we jumped on it in a heartbeat,” McManus said.

Pre-coronavirus, the Yankee Candle flagship store drew more than 12 million visitors per year, making it one of the most popular attractions in the state.

McManus announced the move Wednesday on the brewery’s Facebook page. Renovations, including the construction of brewery equipment, has been ongoing for months.

The brewery will have three barrels of capacity, much smaller than the 30-barrel brewery in Enfield but a little bigger than Powder Hollow’s other satellite location in Middletown, Connecticut, McManus said. A barrel of beer is 31 gallons.

“This is designed for us to have a spot to try out new recipes and new ingredients from local farms,” he said.

The new brewery also will have beers from the Enfield brewery. McManus said the tap list in Deerfield will include IPAs, sours and — rare for microbreweries — lagers.

The new venture will have food from Hillside Pizza, which will have two locations at Yankee Candle after opening a café in the food court in January 2019.

Hillside also has locations in Hadley, Bernardston and near Yankee Candle on Greenfield Road in South Deerfield. It is locally owned.

Having food available is important not just because beer and pizza go together, McManus said. Under the Massachusetts coronavirus reopening plan, bars that don’t serve food are not allowed to reopen yet.

In Connecticut, Powder Hollow has reopened with food trucks, McManus said.

“And we are open seven days a week,” he said.

Yankee Candle closed the fine-dining Chandler’s Restaurant in 2017, 22 years after Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge opened it. Au Bon Pain had operations both in the Chandler’s building and in the food court until it closed both early 2019.

Deerfield is no stranger to craft beer. The nearby Berkshire Brewing Co., established in 1994, recently reopened its outdoor beer garden.

This story originally appeared in Masslive.com.