It's ale in a days work for new Bronx brewers

Brewmen Steve O'Sullivan and Niall Henry show off pint glasses on that they hope will soon be filled with their own brew. Photo by Claudio Papapietro

By Kate Pastor

A plan for craft beer is brewing in the Bronx.

Working out of an old ice cream factory — a warehouse in Yonkers that gives new meaning to the term frost-brewed — Riverdale resident Steve O’Sullivan, along with partners Niall Henry and Brewmaster Damian Brown, are plotting away.

Soon they hope to start the borough’s first modern microbrewery in the South Bronx, with beers like Riverd(ALE), Mother Hefe’n Bronx, Woodlawn Wheat Ale and Hip HopStout, paying homage to the city’s northern borough.

With a master’s degree in business administration from Pace University, a stint in minor league baseball, years as a financial analyst for Standard & Poors and a slew of entrepreneurial endeavors under his belt, the idea of starting a microbrewery came to Mr. O’Sullivan, 29, in fitting fashion this summer: “Sitting around with a couple of guys drinking beers,” he said.

He and his friends could not believe that there wasn’t a single Bronx brewery so he immediately did what any modern entrepreneur does: he bought the Web domain thebronxbrewery. com, he said.

Hooking up with Mr. Henry, an Irish-born banker, also 29, who was raised in Woodlawn, graduated from Manhattan College and has owned bars as well as worked behind them, — the pair started working on a business plan. By the fall they had picked up a third partner, Mr. Brown, a recent graduate of University of California Davis’ Master Brewers Program who recently moved to Manhattan.

Mr. O’Sullivan, the self-proclaimed “big thinker” of the group, envisions taps fashioned like No. 1 and No. 6 subway lines, a turnstile entrance to the brewery’s yet-to-be-determined home, and faux 40-ounce bottles in what look like brown paper bags.

And while they already have a Facebook group, a Twitter account, t-shirts, baseball hats and beer mugs, they still lack beer, a brewery, or much money. Even at this early stage, they are finding that you can’t put the cask before the ale.

“Dude, we need to get actual beer first,” Mr. O’Sullivan says he is often reminded by Mr. Henry.

So while the pair is busy working on business plans, blueprints and meetings with investors so that they can move out of Mr. O’Sullivan’s father’s construction digs and claim the Bronx as the “birthplace of hip hops,” Mr. Brown will focus on brewing — milling the malt, mashing it, boiling the extract from the malt and adding hops at various intervals for bitterness, flavor and aroma, before chilling and fermenting the beer.

For now, he will work with the small collection of brewing containers assembled in their warehouse.

By the end of February, the group hopes to start serving tasting and samplings at select bars and restaurants, and by the summer, they plan to be brewing away.

Many microbreweries start by contracting larger breweries to actually make and package the beer. But these guys say they aren’t looking for shortcuts.

“We feel if we’re gonna call ourselves the Bronx Brewery we should actually be brewing it here in the Bronx,” Mr. O’Sullivan said. Otherwise “we’d feel kind of like posers.”

Their eyes are now set on the historic Banknote building in Hunts Point, where they say artists and exiled Manhattanites are revitalizing the area so fast that soon, all it will lack is a brewery.

A representative from the building offered them a 500- square-foot stand-alone space equipped with an outdoor area for a beer garden, Mr. O’Sullivan said.

“The guy told me the first thing they thought of was a brewery,” he said.

Besides the beer, the only thing still standing between them and the brewery is the approximately $700,000 they are trying to raise for things like rent, equipment and raw materials.

In the meantime, they are creating a marketing strategy to be reckoned with, asking friends and associates to help them by writing what comes to mind when they think of “The Bronx” on a mood board.

Mr. O’Sullivan, who lives on Delafield Avenue in Riverdale and grew up on the same block, says he became well acquainted with the borough’s widespread brand recognition when he was playing in the minor leagues.

“I live in a nice house on a dead end street in Riverdale and people are sort of asking if I’ve ever been shot at before,” he said.

And every once in a while, he said, even a Riverdalian will find himself saying, “[expletive] you, I’m from the Bronx!”

This is part of the December 31, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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