Otego native Josh Long, together with girlfriend, Lisa Garza, is pairing his two loves: beer and barbecue.
The couple opened Red Barn Farm Brewery & Kountry Kitchen in late May, from the former Pie in the Sky barn-market at 3883 state Highway 7 in Otego.
“I grew up in between Oneonta and Otego,” Long, 37, said. “I have a longtime love for barbecue, and I’ve been trying to perfect my barbecue skills for the last 15 years as a hobby, then we bought this place in January of last year. I grew up coming here as a kid, and I knew it was for sale, so we decided to come look at it. We didn’t have a complete idea in mind when we came, but we knew we could do something with it, and we knew we wanted to bring back the farm market aspect of it.
“We tossed some ideas around, and I’ve been doing home-brew for the last five years, so we decided, ‘Why not take my knowledge of beer and barbecue and combine the two?’” he continued. “I started looking up microbreweries and found that New York State had farm brewery (incentives), so started doing the paperwork all winter long. Professionally, before this, I was actually a truck driver and I’d been driving truck for 15 years but decided, ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ and this was the opportunity.”
Garza, Long said, brings 16-plus years of food-service industry experience, having worked in her family’s Phelps, New York restaurant, Gus’s Kountry Kitchen.
The food portion of the operation, Long said, opened first from the couple’s food truck, with an outdoor beer window soon to follow and the interior tasting room coming next. Red Barn Farm Brewery & Kountry Kitchen, he said, offers “a mix of classic American fare.”
“It’s burgers and stuff like that, but specializing in homemade barbecue,” he said. “There will be things I’m going to personally be making — the pulled pork, the chopped brisket, we’re doing some smoked and fried chicken wings, so those will be a custom deal, and brisket burnt ends and I have a homemade barbecue sauce. We’re going to combine that with some items like burgers or a barbecue melt, which is essentially a grilled cheese on steroids with smoked meat.
“There will be … even before summer is over, specials (such as) rib dinners and brisket dinners,” Long continued. “And we will be opening the brewery in a fashion, outdoors, before the indoor (portion) gets open. We’ll get that up and going and do a beer-serving window next to the food trailer, and we have a large event tent in the parking lot for up to 60 seats and five picnic tables set up outside. I will have three different styles of ale, brewed in-house, and, as a farm brewery, that allows us to sell other New York State-made beers and we’ll have New York State wine and cider.”
As the businesses establishes itself, Long said, he plans to expand.
“Right now, we’ve got the barn split in half; it’s still wide open, but we built a new half wall that separates the one side for the indoor tasting room and the other side … will be returned to a farm market-style shopping-type deal,” he said. “We’ll be doing some of our own local products and sourcing other local products from farms and whatever else we might be able to get. And this is a long-term goal, but we would like to put ice cream back in the barn.”
Though Long said he is “hoping for a wider draw,” locals are “very excited.”
“My preferred customer is local first, but we’re here to accommodate everybody as best as we can,” he said. “Even the town planning board … was very receptive to the idea and a new business in Otego and they were wiling to help us. We’re hoping to be a place where people with kids can come and hang out; come with the whole family for a bite to eat and have a beer. We’re open to anybody and everybody.”
Long said launching the business locally mattered.
“I consider Otego home,” he said. “So, it was coming back home and (having) a place like this that everybody’s familiar with. I couldn’t stand seeing it sit here empty, so we wanted to revive it and bring something to the Otego community.”
Red Barn Farm Brewery & Kountry Kitchen is open from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, with the likelihood that hours will increase along with the brewery.
For more information or to view a menu, visit redbarnbbqny.com or find “Red Barn Farm Brewery & Kountry Kitchen” on Facebook.