It’s no secret that most of Brooklyn Brewery’s beer is bottled upstate, in Utica, but will the brewery itself lose its metropolitan fig leaf, and have to move away entirely? A Times piece yesterday suggests that relocation may be in the cards if the place wants to expand, which it apparently does. Although the story ends on a jocular note (“Once you name your company Brooklyn Brewery, you kind of take away the threat of moving to New Jersey”), it paints a dire picture of how hard it is to create a product in New York City.
The landlords of Williamsburg are holding on to their industrial spaces, in the hope that they can be rezoned as residential ones, and an ambitious, complicated plan to move to the Red Hook piers came to naught thanks to the byzantine political games played by the city, the Port Authority, Jerry Nadler, and an entity called American Stevedoring that we’re sure you don’t want to get mad at you. It’s a hard story, but one you’ve heard before. Meanwhile, Six Point Craft Ales, in Red Hook, continues to make all its beers inside the city limits — at least for now.
