Brewery, tasting room set to open soon in Riverhead
The kegs are stacked. The ingredients are stocked. The fermentation tanks are in place.
And in about six to eight weeks, the owners of the Long Ireland Beer Company expect to get their state liquor license and get to work on brewing beer on Pulaski Street in Riverhead.
Co-owner Greg Martin said the neighborhood air “will have a slight scent of baking bread” once their brewery and tasting room is up and running in the 8,800-square-foot former Agway building.
The brewery is now outfitted with five large fermentation tanks, and other beer-making equipment that Mr. Martin and his partner, Dan Burke, purchased through eBay.com from the shuttered Pennichuck Brewing in New Hampshire.
Construction began in October.
The company’s first and most popular release, Long Ireland Celtic Ale, is currently brewed in Connecticut and is available in some 120 bars and restaurants across Long Island. They’ve been storing their beer in Port Jefferson.
Mr. Martin, of Port Jefferson Station, and Mr. Burke, of Shoreham, said their beer is brewed in one day and takes two weeks to ferment before it is put in kegs and shipped.
The two buddies had worked together at Marran Oil in Holtsville, when they began brewing beer as a hobby during their down time but at that point they couldn’t imagine one day owning their own brand of craft beer. “We never got into this to get rich,” Mr. Martin told the News-Review in October. “It was something my partner and I did for years together and we enjoyed it. It was something we wanted to pursue on a grander scale.”
