Adirondack Pub and Brewery raises a glass to new expansion

By: Matt Hunter

When the doors first opened 13 years ago, the Adirondack Brewery was a spot known mostly to locals and summer tourists. But as YNN's Matt Hunter reports, the brew pub's recent expansion is proof the brewery's unique variety of beer has reached a much larger audience.

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. – Light or dark, hoppy or sweet, it seems everyone has their favorite at the Adirondack Brewery.
"My favorite is our Bare Naked Ale and our Dirty Blonde," said John Carr, who opened the brewery in 1999.
"The Bare Naked Ale is my favorite, it's the best," regular customer Kathy Delgiacco said.
"I like the IPA, hops are good,” Queensbury resident Brett Finemore said. “I'm a hoppy guy."
"Our regulars all come here for the IPA,” said J.K. Camp, who started working at the pub more than six years ago. “They knock down the doors for the IPA."
In addition to its specialty barrel-aged beers, the popular brewery on Lake George's Canada Street offers 11 different varieties.
First a local secret, business began to pour after summer tourists began coming back year after year. Several local grocery chains even began selling it in stores after Carr struck a deal with DeCrescente Distributing Company in Mechanicville.
"Luckily for us, even in the downturn in the economy, local beer drinkers have really started to seek out local New York State brewed beers,” Carr said.
"It is exciting, definitely,” Camp said. “If you brew it, they will come."
By the end of their first decade, Carr and his team were making about 700 barrels a year, with that number reaching 2,000 barrels last year.
No longer able to keep up with a growing demand, they began an aggressive expansion project last July which was completed this week.
"Each barrel is about 31 gallons,” Carr said. “This addition will allow us to get up to about 10,000 barrels, which will get us into the top five percent of all brew pubs in the United States."
Carr says the goal for this next year is to produce about 4,000 barrels.
The expansion also allows for bottling and boxing to be done on-site and the addition of five new jobs.
With beer naturally replacing champagne, staff toasted their success with loyal customers at a celebration Wednesday night.
"It's very exciting to see it grow,” Delgiacco said. “It's nice to see local businesses expand and contribute to the economy."
"I've been to microbreweries all over the country and you take his nine or ten beers, most places have one or two that are good. All of his beers are good," Finemore said.
For more information, visit the Adirondack Pub and Brewery’s official web site.

http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/top_stories/584648/adirondack-pub-and-brewery-raises-a-glass-to-new-expansion/ 

Adirondack Brewery: Fighting Corporate Power One Beer at a Time

Lake George Mirror
By Anthony F. Hall

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

In the thirteen years since John Carr opened the Adirondack Pub and Brewery on Lake George’s Canada Street, craft brews’ share of the beer market has grown from 2% to 30%.
“People used to walk out of here when they couldn’t get a Budweiser,” says Carr.
In fact, the national brands were so successful in snuffing out independent brewers that the equipment Carr needed to start brewing his own beer was readily available, at fire sale prices.
Now, rather than demanding Budweiser, Carr’s customers gather weekly to sample and critique the newest beers.
“I call it the camaraderie of hops,” said Carr.
Increasingly, more and more women are drawn to craft brews, Carr said.
“Women drink our beers as though they were wines,” said Carr. “The beers are interesting enough to linger over.”
The appeal of craft beers in general, and the Adirondack Brew Pub’s in particular, was obvious earlier this winter, when Carr hosted a “Festival of Barrels,” a sampling of limited-edition, bourbon-barrel-aged brews.
The event drew hundreds of people, and among its more noteworthy features was this: most of those people came from far-flung areas.
The Adirondack Pub and Brewery has become a destination, thanks in part to the fact that craft brew fans occupy a growing share of the travel and tourism market.
“Craft beer drinkers go out of their way to visit a local brewery,” said Carr. “When we first opened, most of our customers were casual tourists. Today, they tell us they’re making it a point to stop here on their way to Lake Placid or Montreal.”
The visibility of the Brew Pub has also grown because its beers are now distributed not only to bars and restaurants, but also to markets and beverage centers.
“The local markets got behind us, and we really appreciated that support,” says Carr.
Stewarts, Price Chopper and Grand Union now carry Adirondack beer, and Carr hopes to enlarge his market to encompass stores from Albany to Canada.
The brewery will soon have the capacity to meet that increased demand.
A new addition to the brewpub, now under construction, will nearly double the brewery’s output.
“I’m too independent not to want to brew, bottle and sell my beer myself,” said Carr.
Some brewpubs outsource their production. Worse, some entrepreneurs are inventing brands, paying large breweries to brew the beer, and then presenting their wares as authentic craft brews at festivals.
“Sometimes the only authentic thing about the beer is the t-shirt emblazoned with the brand,” said Carr.
Moreover, multi-national corporations are buying up small breweries, brewing the beer in bulk and then distributing it without disclosing that it’s now a national brand, just with a cooler label.
“We call them faux craft beers,” with Carr.
Once the national brands realized they couldn’t defeat the independent brewers, they decided to join them, or at least pretend to, and according to Carr, that means he’s still having to battle corporate power.
“Consumers don’t always know where their beer is coming from,” said Carr. “We’re still competing with Budweiser, but now we’re competing with it on the level of craft brews. That can be difficult if consumers aren’t aware that their beer comes from some plant.”
Authentic craft beers are, of course, fresher than the faux crafts; but they also support year-round, local jobs.
“I wanted to create year-round jobs; that’s one of the reasons why I decided to invest even more heavily in the brewery,” said Carr. “People drink beer year round.”
With the expansion of the brewery, Carr hopes to increase his work force to fourteen people, working forty-hour weeks with full benefits.
Carr and New York State’s other independent brewers recently won some support from their US Senator, Chuck Schumer.
In December, Schumer announced the creation of an “I Love NY Brew” campaign to place more locally-brewed New York beer in New York City and state restaurants, bars and convenience store shelves.
Schumer said that pushing New York-brewed beer onto convenience store shelves and restaurants in major cities like New York would be a major step forward for an industry that pumps billions of dollars into the state’s economy every year.
“Everything helps,” said Carr. “Schumer knows that when you buy truly local beer, you’re supporting local people and the local economy.”

Brewers Reserve

Brewers have release the latest "brewers reserve" a Belgian amber, that have been aged in American oak barrels that that been used for aging bourbon, then used for aging of apple jack brandy, then we aged our beer in them. This give the beer a very complex flavor with a mix of the charclo and sweetness of bourbon, mixed with the light hints on apple, and then all the unusual flavors of a Belgium classic.

As we increase production of our bottling line our beers are now available in beverage centers in the area, and in the Grand Unions in the North Country.

thanks for the support

Popular Adirondack Pub and Brewery set to expand

Updated 06/20/2011 06:49 PM

By: Matt Hunter
YNN - Your News Now

For more than a decade, it's been well known to tourists and locals in the Lake George area. Now after recent success, the popular Adirondack Brewery and Pub is expanding. Our Matt Hunter has more on the project that will make it one of the biggest brew pubs in the country.

For more than a decade, it's been well known to tourists and locals in the Lake George area. Now after recent success, the popular Adirondack Brewery and Pub is expanding. Our Matt Hunter has more on the project that will make it one of the biggest brew pubs in the country.

 

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. – After graduating college with an engineering degree, John Carr spent several years in Europe, working at local pubs to keep cash in his wallet. When he came home, engineering was put on ice.
"I loved the styles of beer that were available in Europe and when I came back to the United States, you know, a young guy out of college, I couldn't really afford all of those beers,” Carr said. “So I decided I was going to try to learn how to brew them."
For ten years, it was mostly a hobby he did from home, but in 1999, Carr opened the Adirondack Brewery and Pub on Lake George's Canada Street, eventually building it into one of the town's most successful businesses.
"My feeling was, there were enough people out there who enjoyed good beer and they'd be willing to try, good beer, especially beers that were drinkable and had a good favor," Carr said.
Carr's team produces about 700 barrels of beer each year in the brewery attached to his pub and restaurant.
In recent years, their twelve varieties have become so popular that Carr had to install a 60-barrel tank to keep up with demand. Now, he's taking it even further with plans for a 4,000 square foot addition.
"We've tripled the amount of beer that we've produced in the past year and it's a big, big growth for us and we're hoping, moving into 2013 and double that again," Carr said.
The new facility, which is scheduled to break ground in the fall and be complete by winter, will boost production to 5,000 barrels a year, making it one of the 20 largest brew pubs in the country.
A new agreement with DeCresente Distributing in Mechanicville also allows Carr to bottle and sell the beer in stores for the first time ever, leading him to believe there's no ceiling on his growth.
"It's very exciting to be expanding like that, despite the economy and everything else that's going on in the world, people are still enjoying a good beer," Carr said.
According to Carr, the expansion will allow for the creation of five new full-time, year-round jobs.
For more information about Adirondack Pub and Brewery, head to http://www.adkpub.com

Adirondack brewery barrels forward

By Steve Barnes Senior writer
Published 12:01 a.m., Sunday, June 19, 2011
TimesUnion.com

A little brew pub in Lake George Village is in the middle of an expansion in production capabilities that, within a couple of years, could vault it into the ranks of the top 10 brew pubs in the nation, as measured by volume of beer produced.
Adirondack Pub & Brewery, founded in 1999, grew slowly until last year, when owner John Carr began an aggressive plan to widen the reach of his Adirondack-brand beers. Adding a 60-barrel production tank quadrupled Carr's volume, and he plans to bring another 60-barrel tank online after expanding the pub's Canada Street facility.
This winter, the brewery began bottling its beer, and, after years of self-distribution, it is now represented by DeCrescente Distributing of Mechanicville, which covers 11 counties. A year after Adirondack brews were available at the pub and about 40 bars from Chestertown to Glens Falls, they are now sold at more than 150 locations including North Country Price Choppers and Capital Region beverage centers.
The brewery produced about 700 barrels of beer in 2010. (One barrel, the industry's standard measure of volume, is equal to 31 gallons.) Last year, Adirondack's production ranked 391st out of nearly 1,000 brew pubs tracked by New Brewer magazine. Within a couple of years, according to Carr's plan, his brewery will be making 5,000 barrels, which would put it in eighth place on New Brewer's list. (In the Capital Region, Brown's Brewing in Troy ranks 33rd; Davidson Brothers in Glens Falls 180th; the Albany Pump Station 241st.)
"The demand just keeps growing," marvels Carr, who started as a homebrewer in 1989 because, he says, "I was bored with the beer I could afford and couldn't afford the beer I liked."
He adds, "We have to expand more -- we can't keep up. We're at production capacity." (The brewery produces 50 barrels per week.)
The pub currently has 12 beers on tap and available in kegs, from light lagers and wheat beers to an intensely hoppy double IPA brewed with 45 pounds of honey from Ballston Lake Apiaries and a coffee-chocolate stout made with Guatemalan chocolate and coffee roasted by the nearby Caffe Vero in Lake George Village.
One of Adirondack's limited-production specialty brews, being sold only in bottles at the brewery, is a Belgian amber ale aged for three months in apple-brandy barrels. Available starting later this week, the beer costs $18 for a four-pack, about $10 more than the suggested retail for six-packs of the three beers Adirondack regularly bottles: the copper-colored Bear Naked Ale, a citrusy wheat beer called Dirty Blond and a seasonal brew that, for the summer, is a traditional Bavarian hefeweizen that offers hints of clove and banana.
"It's an excellent product that's always consistent and has been very well received by restaurants," says Larry Nichols, a district manager for DeCrescente, who brought Adirondack aboard as a distribution client. (Adirondack is the only brand made in the greater Capital Region carried by the distributor.)
The Adirondack name and the famed purity of Lake George's water, used to brew Adirondack's products, make the beer an easy sell to new customers, Nichols says.
"Sometimes, if a beer is too local it's a hard sell outside of its immediate area but everybody knows Lake George," he says. "The Adirondack name makes it a natural for places from Montreal all the way down the Hudson Valley and into the western part of the state."
Carr is pleased with the relationship with DeCrescente, which, as the largest beer distributor in upstate New York, has the infrastructure in place to handle billings, orders, delivery, retrieval of empty kegs and all of the other logistical hassles of getting Adirondack's products to a larger audience.
"It frees us up to do what we really should be focusing on -- brewing beer," says Carr, who was head brewer until four years ago, when he turned the duties over to a young Michigander named Adam Schmeichel.
Says Carr, "Adam represents the avant-garde of contemporary brewing. I'm excited for us to be a part of that."