Draft Mag pegs Suarez Family Brewery as having the “pedigree to be New York state’s next ‘it’ brewery.”
Three years in the making, this small-scale brewery opened less than a month ago in Livingstone, NY, four hours upstate from NYC.
Husband-and-wife duo Dan Suarez and Taylor Cocalis Suarez, co-founder of Good Food Jobs, plan to brew three categories of beer. Half will be mixed-fermentation saison and farmhouse beers (half of that half will be fresher, draft forms; the other half will be super-long, barrel-aged and intense fruited specialties that won’t be ready for months); a quarter of production will be relatively low-ABV aromatic ales; and the last quarter of production will be comprised of unfiltered pilsners.
Dan’s pedigree includes stints at Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Beerworks (a training ground for the Other Half Brewing Company crew) and Sixpoint, and most notably after that, three years at Vermont’s Hill Farmstead Brewery with founder Shaun Hill, this year named RateBeer’s best brewer in the world.
Kickshaw will be the one and only bar in Queens serving the Suarez’s brews. All are welcome to this pay-as-you-go-event.
We’ll be tapping two of the Suarez’s on Thursday (they’re half barrels and will probably make it through the weekend):
CRISPY LITTLE Hoppy American Wheat Ale 5% ABV Brewed with a touch of wheat and both American and Old World hops. Contrary to Belgian or German wheat beers this is super crisp and fresh, and drinks more like a juicy pale ale.
MS. FRANK Franconian Keller Lager 5.1% ABV Inspired by the unfiltered lager beers of Franconia, Germany. Light orange hue, subtle maltiness, crisp and delicate.