Mike Philbrick called it the “perfect storm,” but he wasn’t referring to Hurricane Sandy, which slammed into Long Island and caused massive flooding and beach erosion in late fall of 2012.
No, Philbrick was talking about the circumstances three years ago that led to Port Jeff Brewing Co. (PJBC) opening its doors the day after one of his four children, son Hampton, was born. Following a long delay in receiving the requisite licensing from New York State, the child arrived two weeks early—on the eve of the opening of Port Jefferson’s first operating brewery in 13 years.
It’s been much smoother sailing ever since for Port Jeff Brewing Co., whose debut in the popular harbor town came on Oct. 15, 2011, two and a half months after Philbrick and his crew had been ready to roll. Once the paperwork was finally in hand, PJBC joined a booming Long Island craft-beer scene that was a long time coming.
“It was after seeing all the breweries that had emerged in Pennsylvania throughout the mid-to-late 90s when I was living there, and then moving to New York and seeing the absence of that and the potential, I was like, it’s ridiculous that there is no brewery out here in Port Jeff,” said Philbrick, who became an avid homebrewer in 2000 when his then-girlfriend and now wife, Sharon, bought him a kit for Christmas.
“There was nowhere for anybody to go. So being a guy that would regularly visit two to three breweries a week in Pennsylvania that were all local to me—Victory, Weyerbacher, Stoudts—and having nothing like that in New York, that was really the catalyst to definitely get into brewing and to definitely do it in Port Jeff.”
Port Jefferson, or “Port Jeff” as it’s called by locals, is a bustling tourist village on the North shore of Long Island—about halfway between New York City and the Hamptons. A major ferry line operates across the Long Island Sound between Port Jeff and Bridgeport, Conn., bringing—literally—boatloads of New Englanders to town and through the quaint courtyards of Chandler Square, a brick-paved promenade featuring craft shops, ice-cream parlors and eateries neighboring PJBC.
“That’s really why we picked that location,” Philbrick said. “We could have been in a warehouse that no one would have been able to find up in (nearby) Port Jeff Station or Centereach or something like that. We decided to be downtown because we knew we wouldn’t have to spend what we thought we were going to have to spend in marketing because we would have so much foot traffic; that would be a tradeoff for the higher rent in that retail district, and it seemed to work.”
Expansion in 2015
PJBC has employed the same 7-barrel Premier Stainless brewing system since it opened, now with seven 15-barrel fermentation tanks crammed into a tight working space (the brew house and adjoining tasting room occupy less than 900 square feet combined). Production the first full year in 2012 totaled about 800 barrels, which PJBC should end up doubling this year.
Philbrick’s company has much bigger plans for 2015, thanks to several business moves this year that should once again double production and make PJBC a significant player on the Long Island beer scene.
Philbrick recently purchased two 60-barrel fermenters that will be installed 25 miles away at award-winning Great South Bay Brewery, where some of Port Jeff’s beers will be brewed for distribution throughout Long Island and elsewhere under a tenant agreement.
“We’re simply out of space,” Philbrick said. “It’s our equipment (the fermenters), and we’ll be utilizing Great South Bay’s brew house and they’ll help monitor things since we can’t be there all the time, so it’s a nice arrangement.”
In addition, Philbrick recently purchased a canning line as part of the expansion. The crew plans to shut down brewing operations during canning days, as there’s not enough room in the brew house to do both.
Next door behind the boat-shaped wooden bar, as many as 30 different beers have flowed from the taps in 2014. They include several barrel-aged offerings stored in a 2,000 square-foot warehouse just around the corner, the popular Port Jeff Porter and Tripel H, which earned a bronze medal this year as one of the state’s Best Individual Craft Beers at the TAP New York Craft Beer & Fine Food Festival.
Like other businesses in the village, many PJBC beers have nautical-themed names to honor Port Jeff’s ship-building heritage, such as Schooner Ale, Low Tide Black IPA and Starboard Oatmeal Stout.
In the summer months, live music plays every Wednesday evening in the courtyard outside the brewery—site of the former Mather & Jones Shipyard—rain or shine.
With such a tight space inside the tasting room, Philbrick chuckled, “It’s a lot more fun with shine.”
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