Bad Dream’s good books
IN NEW MILFORD, A FRIENDLY ENCLAVE FOR HORROR BOOKS AND BEER
When Nanette Sauer moved recently to New Milford for work, she had one primary concern.
“I moved here and I was like, ‘what the f*** do I do here?’” Sauer says, seated across the bar at Bad Dream Brewing on a recent Sunday.
Behind the bar were Max and Michelle Retter, husband and wife and half of the fourperson team that opened the brewery just over a year ago.
Around the small taproom — tucked between an Olympia Sports and Staples in New Milford’s Fairfield Plaza — roughly 15 other people were scattered. The Retters pour the occasional beer, but mostly talk to customers, most of whom had taken part in the brewery’s monthly horror book club, led by Michelle Retter, which has provided Sauer at least some entertainment in her new home.
“I’m, like, so thankful for you guys,” Sauer says, as lingering book club members carried on lively conversations about the assigned book, “The Elementals,” by Michael McDowell.
The book club began shortly after Bad Dream opened. The brewery itself grew out of a horror book club started by the Retters, Max’s sister Emily Leone, and his high school friend, Brian Benzinger. Increasingly, the club’s
meetings became focused on home brewing and, eventually, they decided to go into business together.
Michelle Retter is from California, met Max in Austin and, together, they lived in a van in Colorado before returning to Max’s hometown. As they stopped at breweries along the way, they developed certain preferences for how a brewery should look. With its dark walls hung liberally with art work, wooden floors and tables and shelves of books, the taproom looks like a bohemian study or a Brooklyn coffee house. According to Michelle Retter, the owners wanted a “vaguely horrorthemed” taproom and endeavored to keep the artwork displayed on the walls, and on their merchandise, “ghoulish.”
“We kind of knew we wanted to do something very different than standard cement floors — the same brewery that everybody’s been to,” Michelle Retter says. “People are definitely surprised when they come in. They forget they’re in a strip mall, which was our goal. But we’re selffunded, so we were like, ‘we can afford this rent even if we don’t make any money, so that’s what we’re gonna go with.’”
Bad Dream started small. They’ve recently started a push to get their beers into local bars and restaurants and hired parttime staff. Of the owners, Michelle Retter is the only one who works full time at the brewery. Leone, a chemist, Max Retter and Benzinger, both computer programmers, split their time.
The brewery has eight taps, with seven beers of varying styles and a cider. The beer names are in keeping with the brewery’s horror theme — Pensive Skeleton, a hoppy sour, for example — or are otherwise comical — Tortuga Lechuga is a Mexican lager, Squirrel Awareness Month is a harvest ale. According to Michelle Retter, they brew predominantly India pale ales, because it’s what’s popular. Before any beer is served in the taproom, it needs approval from each of the owners.
“Our guidelines is that all four of us have to like it, which is really hard, actually,” Michelle Retter says. “If somebody doesn’t like it we’ll dump it.”
For many book club members, the appeal of the brewery is at least twofold.
Kat Goeppel, who regularly attends the monthly meetings with her daughter, Killian Bradbury, is a major fan of horror, as well as Bad Dream’s beer. The atmosphere of the space and the camaraderie built out of the book club — attendance at which can range between single digits and more than 20, depending on the book — are also important draws.
“This is our happy place,” Goeppel says.
This month, the club will read “The Ritual,” by Adam Nevill. In the past, they’ve read books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Ray Bradbury, some of which are recommendations are others are chosen by the Retters.
Sauer says she was heartened to find a group open to drinking before noon on a Sunday and, in a sleepy, small town, likeminded people excited to talk about books. Sauer, who was an English major in college, said she was prejudiced against horror books, which she thought mostly “sucked.” She’s since discovered many that she enjoys, as well as an expanding group of friends in town.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Sauer says, to the Retters, of her experience. “Because book clubs, you know, they’re not exactly what the kids are talking about nowadays.”
“WE KIND OF KNEW WE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT THAN STANDARD CEMENT FLOORS — THE SAME BREWERY THAT EVERYBODY’S BEEN TO.”