Beer (Photo: Flickr/Afagen)

In the last few years the number of local craft brewers has been steadily growing. There’s some seriously good beer being made in and around Boston by such relatively new, small-scale operations as Pretty Things, Blue Hills and Clown Shoes.

Recently, Jane Ward of Local In Season profiled Night Shift, a small brewing company from Somerville that is slated to enter the local microbrewery scene this fall. She visited their current brewing headquarters/lab/apartment to learn more about the brewing process from two of Night Shift‘s founders, Michael Oxton and Mike O’Mara. She offers a glimpse of the ins and outs of building a small brewery. Most important, though, are the descriptions of  Night Shift’s various beers, which incorporate all sorts of unusual, locally sourced ingredients from Taza chocolate to Mem Tea.