Mid-Atlantic breweries in planning (2020)

Drowned Lands opening as expected and holy hell its gorgeous.

 

How's it look for outside seating? Haven't seen any pictures of or word on that.

 

OOOOOOOOppenings! We got oooooppenings!

- Frequentum in Canandaigua had its soft opening this past weekend and opens for real real on Wednesday. Initial taplist has a couple NEIPAs, coffee brown, mixed berry sour, a cherry/peach sour and a more traditional East Coast IPA. Love it. Love a brewery opening in the land of Genny with a cream ale. Gonna be out that way this week and will report back on quality.

- Great Sacandaga in Broadalbin had a soft opening this past weekend and opens for real on Thursday.

They're starting with a 'pre-prohibition lager,' a smoked amber, a dry irish stout and a chinook IPA. Love that too. Those styles will play super well in the area they're in, and based on the lengthy descriptions for each and the fact that they all have their own individual badges/insignias I'm pretty impressed with what they're doing.

 

After that, unfortunately, I'm pretty dry on news for now. Rail-to-River in Ravena and The Warbler in Delmar are the only in-progress places I have anything on with the latter looking like they're making great progress towards a fall/early winter opening and the former saying a 'soft tentative' opening date of late 2020.

I'm sure some other stuff will pop up, though, and I'll relay it here when it does.

 

Thought I was dry -- I am not dry.

Totally forgot Mixed Breed in Guilderland is also still tracking to open this year and just this morning I found out about a place in Valatie (20 mins south of Albany) that just opened two weeks ago.

Reifenberg Brewing looks heavily focused on old-school styles (opened with a Kolsch, a dunkel, a German Pils, an Irish Red and an English nut brown) but they've also got a couple NEIPAs to keep that segment happy. I don't feel that the NEIPAs are usually very good at places like this (which, fine, if I want that style I know where to go for it) but I am very excited to check out the traditional side of what they're doing.

 

So this was out of nowhere -- From the Ground Brewing in Red Hook NY opened this past weekend. I had had a few of their bottled beers 3-4 years ago and really liked them, but it just seemed like a taproom was never gonna open. Then bam. Double bonus is Red Hook is ~10 mins from Suarez so I'm gonna go check out FTG, then hit Suarez and Reifenberg on the way back up.

Checked out Frequentum in Canandaigua and holy shit. Couldn't have been more impressed. Their beer is stellar across a bunch of styles (NEIPA, cream ale, fruited sour, coffee brown), the space is beautiful, the staff is friendly and knowledgeable. I ended up going twice while I was in town. If you head out to OH/Mortalis you NEED to hit this place up too.

 

Apex Brewing in Monroe, NY got its liquor license and its first two beers are in the tank. Based on progress pics I'd imagine this is still a couple months out but that's an unsubstantiated guess. The best kind of guess, really.

Also:

1) Went to From the Ground Brewing last weekend, left very impressed. They've got a cool, entirely outdoor taproom on a farm right by a pond and the beers are great. Had a couple different saisons (one I had had before and loved) that were worth coming there for alone. They also had a hazy pale and 2-3 other things on. And delicious local beef jerky!

2) Hit Reifenberg on the way back up, and as expected, this will be a place to hit if you like your traditional styles. Had a dunkel in a stein and it was absolutely terrific. The kolsch was very good too. And, more surprisingly based on my usual don't-get-hazies-from-brewers-that-make-more-traditional-beer edict, their NEIPA was very good too! It was hazy, but leaned towards a Maine Beer Co style of crispy fruitiness.

Reifenberg is also like two miles from Saisonnier so that's a nice little 1-2 combo for anyone looking for a day trip. Both Valatie and Kinderhook are nice little towns with other stuff to do also.

 

Went to Drowned Lands.

Holy shit.

I haven't seen a draft line like that anywhere but Treehouse. It was 50 deep. Absolute bedlam. That said -- they run a tight goddamn ship. Moved through the line quickly, they had 12-14 different beers on tap across a lot of different styles and what I was most blown away by was they were using actual glassware.

There had to have been 250-300 people there (plenty of space, most people outside, everyone distanced) yet they still were using actual glassware (and several different kids depending on style of beer you ordered) instead of solo cups. All the beers were stellar, but I already knew that would be the case.

Also hit Tin Barn, quite a huge operation they're running there too. Cool outdoor space, beers were very good but not a lot of discernible differences between the IPAs they had on, and all they had were IPAs. I'd for sure go back or buy their stuff in stores, would just like to see something else on tap.

Lastly, very much not a new brewery but I gotta eat my words on one place real quick. I've definitely disparaged Cousins Ale Works on here with "I have literally never heard a single person talk about or give a shit about their beer" but that was a mistake. They've got an incredible space in Middletown, both inside and out, and I really dug the beers I had there too. Definitely stop by and grab a pint or two if you're headed to EQ since Cousins is like two blocks away.

 

Haha correct, did mean Clemson Bros.