Suds buds Chris Gallant and Damian Brown are pouring over plans for the Bronx Brewery, whose brews will hit city bars later this year. (Jonathan Baskin)
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The inspiration for Steve Nallen’s new Bronx-based beer brand came from a Swede who’s been dead for nearly four centuries.
It happened when Nallen, a lifelong resident of The Bronx’s Woodlawn section and an accountant by trade, was scouting the South Bronx for a site for a possible beer garden, figuring his underserved borough was due for such a destination hangout.
When it occurred to the Bronx-history buff that he was on the former site of the farm of Jonas Bronck — the 17th-century settler who gave the borough its name — something clicked.
“I looked at Sam Adams, the most successful craft beer in the country, and it’s named after an old guy from Boston,” says the 30-year-old. When he realized that his beloved borough had its own equivalent, the seed for the Jonas Bronck’s Beer Co. was planted.
As it happens, that same former farm site is where Damian Brown and Chris Gallant just opened the office for the Bronx Brewery, in a walkup under the Third Avenue Bridge entrance ramp.
An industrial stretch in the South Bronx may not be the first place you’d look for gastronomic entrepreneurs these days, when Brooklyn is seemingly home to every artisanal jerky maker and small-batch pickle producer in existence. But it’s perfect for Brown and Gallant, who hope to put The Bronx on the craft beer map with their Bronx Pale Ale.
“We’d love for our beer to be an ambassador for The Bronx,” says Gallant, a 30-year-old with a mop of dark hair and a business degree from MIT.
Between the two operations, The Bronx — home to numerous breweries before Prohibition — is on the cusp of a mini-craft beer boom. Both brewers say they’re looking not only to sell suds, but to stoke pride in a borough that’s sat in the shadows while Brooklyn — home to the long-running Brooklyn Brewery and several other craft-beer makers — has been worshiped as the avatar of all that’s hip and homegrown.
“Brooklyn has had its spotlight for the last 10 or 15 years, but there’s a lot going on in The Bronx, too, and I think people here are ready for something like this,” says Nallen, whose roots in the borough go back six generations. He says he’s been besieged with interest not only from fellow Bronxites, but from parties like the Bronx borough president’s office, which invited Nallen to pour his beers at the annual Bronx Ball Gala.
A poll of drinkers at the Bronx Ale House in Kingsbridge provided emphatic backup to Nallen’s view that his neighbors are ready to toast to borough pride.
“Hell, yeah,” says lifelong Bronx resident Manny Saez, when asked if he was excited by the idea of a Bronx brew. “I’d totally drink it, and so would my friends.”
Saez was one of several locals who spoke of a long-simmering competition between The Bronx and Brooklyn, and said it was time for their beloved borough to put some points on the board.
“It’s a rivalry — it’s been that way since the ’70s,” says Steve Lennon, a teacher at a nearby school who was pumped by the notion of a borough-based brew. “The Bronx needs to represent in the craft beer game,” he enthused.
Longtime resident Sarita Martinez agreed, and asserted that in any matchup, The Bronx’s natural superiority would carry the day.
“Brooklyn has breweries, a winery and all that — but everybody knows that The Bronx is just better, so obviously we’re going to do things better here,” she says.
As they sipped a pair of tall weiss beers, she and a friend, Angelique Santiago, said it was time for city residents to wake up to what their borough has to offer.
“Everyone is asleep on The Bronx,” says Martinez, as Santiago nodded. “People think it’s all burned-out buildings.”
The area where Bronx Brewery is headquartered fed that image for years. Now, Gallant notes, “There are a lot of cool things happening here,” including renovated loft buildings, galleries and new restaurants. “It’s very dynamic.”
He and Brown, the 30-year-old head brewer, hope to add a full-production brewery with a tasting room to the neighborhood’s mix. For now, they’re working with a Connecticut contract brewer to produce their flagship beer, “a big, malty, dry-hopped pale ale” that they hope to start selling to bars in September. Brown says he hopes it will eventually take its place as “the pale ale of New York City.”
As for the competition, the two parties have a tangled history — Nallen did accounting work for Bronx Brewery before going solo — but they wish each other well, noting that a city of 8 million can easily support two Bronx brewers.
For his part, Nallen is coming out of the gate with a wheat beer, Woodlawn Weisse, and an India pale ale, Pelham Bay IPA, which he expects will be on tap at city bars this month. The Weisse beer will get its premiere tomorrow in its namesake neighborhood, at a kegger benefit at the Rambling House (4292 Katonah Ave.), an Irish pub down the street from Triedy’s, the deli Nallen’s father has run for more than three decades.
Outside of a little help from his carpenter brother, Nallen is handling all the sales and marketing himself, which is keeping him plenty busy, especially since he’s doing it while working his full-time job at a Midtown media company. But so far the reaction has been great, he says.
“I’ve got a lot of bars calling me,” he says.
Including, he notes, bars in Brooklyn.