Tasting my way through New York’s Feral Brewpubs
Feral Brewpub: A small batch, regionally-focused microbrewery, primarily concerned with quality beer, interesting recipes. It has a comfortable setting and inventive beer menu without compromising quality for financial growth.
The length of New York State’s beer trail has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. Many large towns and small cities throughout the state have expanded their regional influence on craft beer.
This movement is in the grand tradition of local European beer drinking.These small producers have traditionally catered their menus to suit the tastes of those people closest to them. Today patrons from all over the country can travel the breadth of the state. They can sample the metropolitan offerings of New York City’s myriad breweries or tour Cooperstown’s stalwart Ommegang brewery, visit the Adirondack offerings of Saranac, or enjoy the Western New York leaders of beer like Southern Tier and Hamburg Brewing Company.
These moderate to large scale craft breweries have helped push the American Craft Beer boom onto the world stage, prompting global conversations about great beer. Every state has their own feral breweries, with some rising to national prominence, sometimes only to be swallowed whole by international conglomerates like InBev.
As we move forward, the likelihood that more and more of these once regionally focused producers will one day become part of a larger market whole becomes greater. There is no doubt that your state’s most beloved producer of craft beer has at least received offers to join the soulless ranks of corporate swill, even if they have been resilient enough to resist these financial temptations.
Struggling to Stay Small
As can be expected, the push-back to this immense growth in the size and scope of craft beer companies has been harsh, and in many cases warranted. It seems that casual consumers and beer aficionados alike are fearful of losing what made these provincial breweries such a refreshing option in the first place: Their dedication to quality, their expansion of public knowledge about beer, and their welcoming neighborhood atmosphere have been rightfully celebrated.
It even seems as though this push-back has now begun to manifest in a different strain of small brewery—the feral brewpub.
These are often extremely small producers working in a casual atmosphere. These makers opened with the same soulful intentions as many of our now leading craft breweries. Forgoing size and a grand financial investment in favor of a specific focus on making beer, these brewers are truly becoming the hidden gems to be found along the state’s widened and lengthened beer trail.
They have escaped into the wild where craft breweries first cut their teeth. Occupying a place where industry leaders such as Brooklyn Brewery were a few years ago, these smaller and more focused breeds of self-brewing pubs have cropped up to fill the void that has expanded in the wake of brewers who have not been able to resist expanding. It is a business lesson as old as time.
As a company, especially one that produces food or drink, increases in size, it becomes harder and harder for owners to put a premium on quality and maintain attention to detail in the face of financial opportunity. The brilliant chef who’s quaint restaurant becomes wildly popular after his stint on a reality TV does not stay where they are and refine their craft. He or she will sign a publicity deal to open five copies of that restaurant all over the globe, lose sight of their passion, and eventually long to return to a twenty-five seat bistro.
Full Boar
In the world of New York State Craft beer, that twenty-five seat bistro, the one that was started for no reason other than passion, is Full Boar Craft Brewery & Taproom of North Syracuse. Before your favorite regional craft brewery was what it is today, it was once a place just like Full Boar.
Part II of this series will follow with a full review of Full Boar.
