HARRISON — Tucked away in the western foothills, Lee Margolin doesn’t mind watching the brewing industry race around him. 

Brewer and sole proprietor of Lake Pennesseewassee Brewing Co., Margolin’s attitude toward the statewide explosion in breweries led by Portland and points south flows against the industry’s conventional wisdom demanding expansion.

“A lot of breweries have visions of grandeur where they want to be Baxter (Brewing Co.) or Shipyard (Brewing Co.). I don’t have those aspirations,” Margolin said. “Should we be successful and grow accordingly, fine. But I have no illusions at the moment I’m anything other than a farmhouse brewer, and I’m content to be the brewer of note for my community.”

On the right day, his home is permeated with the aroma of warm bread drizzled with caramel, evidence the longtime homebrewer is turning out the only microbrewed beer in Oxford Hills.

A former researcher for a neuroscience medical device company, Margolin hung up his lab coat in 2012 to start, in industry terms, a nanobrewery in his home. His professionally designed half-barrel system produces roughly 15 gallons of beer at a time, and there’s no bar or tasting room.

According to the Maine Brewer’s Guild, the state boasts 44 breweries and brew pubs, with another 10 expected to come online in the near future.

In recent times, Maine’s appetite for craft beer has fueled brewery expansions. Lewiston’s Baxter Brewing Co. is a notable example with production nearly doubling to 15,000 barrels in 2013.

Many brewers also unveil one or more new beers every year. By contrast, last year, Margolin produced 540 gallons — 17.4 barrels — of his sole beer, Pennesseewassee pale ale, most of which is capped with a hand lever and naturally carbonated in the bottle.

That isn’t to say he doesn’t have plans to expand; he added a third fermentation tank this year, and the brewery is expected to eclipse last year’s growth thanks to a new Massachusetts distributor, bringing his beer out of Maine for the first time. 

Plans are underway to build a detached brewhouse that would upgrade his capacity to 3.5 barrels per batch, with a room which might one day turn into a taproom if demand warrants it.

But Margolin said he’s having fun and is happy with staying small and growing with the support his beer has received, which he said is indicative of Oxford Hills as a craft-beer-drinking community.

Still, there are stigmas within the brewing community to overcome, and some critics have condemned it for not being sufficiently experimental.

“I got accused — they can be so elitist — by a beer seller of ‘being a session ale.’ I said ‘Yeah, that’s right. That’s how I designed it!'”

Margolin doesn’t object to how other breweries operate, and he’s keen on several newcomers, like Portland-based Bissel Brothers who make hoppy beers with new flavors, but, he said, every brewery is different.

Margolin has been experimenting with adding another style to his lineup. He tried to debut a kolsch beer — similar to a lager — but never quite got the flavor he wanted. Instead, he expects to unveil an elderberry-infused honey brown ale just in time for fall.

When he’s not brewing, Margolin moonlights as one of the nation’s few lamprey snigglers.

His basement contains several aquarium fish tanks, which appear at first glance to be without fish.

On cue, Margolin swirls the gravel and suddenly the water churns with scores of two-inch-long, black, worm-like creatures — lamprey, in their larval form.

Margolin, who has a Ph.D. in biology, is still passionately invested in his old research: Trying to figure out how the lamprey’s ability to re-fuse its severed spine could one day be applied to humans.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, he said he’s one of the few researchers who actively hunts for his own work specimens, which involves trudging to riverbeds wearing equipment reminiscent of the “Ghostbusters.”

“The similarities between brewing and hunting for lamprey?” Margolin said. “Both use cool gadgets!”

ccrosby@sunjournal.com