Two decades ago, craft breweries were a rarity in the Hudson Valley; it was a time just before the industry would find a footing in the region. Now, the many breweries that abound have helped make the area a destination for beer enthusiasts and average tourists alike.
Since 2011, the number of craft breweries operating per year in New York state has gone from less than 100 to over 400.
Sloop Brewing Co. is one of those breweries. It was founded in 2011 by Justin Taylor and Adam Watson, who met at SUNY New Paltz.
“Both of them decided they wanted to start drinking some better beer than your average college student drinks,” said Joe Turco, director of sales and marketing for Sloop. “Justin started home brewing and getting into that prior to 2011 and then in 2011, they started the official brewery. Sloop was born out of there, out of Justin”™s garage in Dutchess County.”
Initially, they sold the beer brewed in Taylor”™s garage at the Beacon Farmers Market. But soon after, production moved to a 150-acre farm and 30-barrel brewhouse and taproom in Elizaville.
The development of their No. 1 seller, Juice Bomb, a hazy, northeastern India pale ale, was a turning point. To this day, Juice Bomb still makes up about 75% of the company”™s sales.
“We hit on a beer with Juice Bomb ”” you know, we have so many great beers and everybody loves all different types of our beers ”” Juice Bomb itself has really, I think, turned your average beer drinker,” Turco said.
With that big hit, they soon outgrew the Elizaville brewhouse and in 2018, the production moved to a 25,000-square foot facility at the former IBM plant in East Fishkill.
The brewery is named for the ships that once kickstarted the movement of people and goods up and down the Hudson River to form the Dutch settler economy in the New York area. A name that makes sense, considering how craft beer is bolstering the region”™s economy now.
Craft beer has a $4.86 million economic impact in the state of New York, as measured in 2019 and that impact, Turco explained, has a sort of compounding effect.
“You see from the growth of these breweries that it”™s not just all one sided and not that all the breweries are making money and selling beer and doing just that,” Turco said. “It has opened up businesses for people, where you now have legitimate craft beer-focused bars and restaurants open up.”
Along with that effect, beer stores like Half Time in Poughkeepsie and Mamaroneck and grocery stores like DeCicco”™s helped popularize craft beer through offering a large selection to their customers.
It seems that breweries also beget breweries in the region and the state. The Hudson Valley has become a destination for its beer, with people often visiting to go to several of them throughout the course of their trip.
According to Turco, breweries like Captain Lawrence and the Newburgh Brewing Co. were some of the earliest brewers in the area”™s craft beer wave, helping to establish the regional scene and industry.
“The running joke was always, you go to Vermont and that”™s the closest drive, if you want to go to beer mecca and go see all these great breweries in one state,” Turco said. “And now there”™s people from Vermont coming to the Hudson Valley. So I think it”™s really put us on the map.”
While the industry had been on an upward trend for years, it was certainly not immune to the difficulties of the effects of Covid-19. According to the Brewers Association, overall beer sales were down almost 3% nationally in 2020, with that number even higher for craft beer, which faced a decline of over 9%. The craft beer market faced a 22% dollar sales loss.
That makes Sloop”™s past year all the more impressive. According to Turco, sales from Sloop actually increased by 34%, and the brewery”™s national ranking among largest regional craft breweries in the country shot up from No. 120 to 72. Its beer is now in markets in 24 states, and has even made its way to Europe, in places like Copenhagen.
The 2020 growth was due in part to a successful pivot to packaging all beer in cans, and no kegs, during lockdowns. Usually, there is a roughly 50/50 split.
“What we did was, in March, April and May during lockdown, we pivoted,” Turco said. “We strictly canned. We had 3.6 million cans come off the canning line in March, April and May ”” only those three months. That was more than what we did in all of 2019 on the canning line.”
After that, draft sales began to pick up again, slowly. Turco discussed the friendly community of the craft beer industry and said that Sloop”™s post-lockdown initiatives intended to help uplift members of that community who weren”™t able to fare so well.
To help bars and taprooms start to open up again, Sloop created a new brew ”” called Hospitality Relief Bomb ”” and sold it to businesses at almost half the price of its usual kegs.
They partnered with local distributor Craft New York and a California-based national charity called Golden Rule to bring proceeds from that to a relief fund for those in the industry who needed it.
“Every case sold at $99 and $10 of that keg was donated to the Golden Rule charity and basically, at the end of the quarter, Golden Rule got all this money from us and started providing grants to anybody in the hospitality industry,” Turco said. “So if you were a busser at a restaurant and you were out of work, if you were a chef who was out of work or a server who was out of work, or a bartender who was out of work, Sloop donated a bunch of money from the keg sales to go to those people in order to get them through, while release packages and things were being worked out.”
Supporting the breweries, bars, taprooms and people of the industry that have been struggling continues to be a priority for Sloop even as things are looking up now in New York state, and of course, it hopes to expand even more ”” in new states, and even at home in New York.
Shouldn’t she be wearing a hairnet??