Northway Brewing Hop House is offering homegrown beverages in Cooperstown.
George Allen, company president, said the path to the upstate taproom was circuitous.
“The Queensbury location was purchased in November 2016, and when I say purchased, it was purchased by Northern Eagle Beverages,” he said. “Stepping back a little, in 2014, Northern Eagle purchased Cooperstown Brewing Company … and Northway Brewing Company never existed — it was Glens Falls LLC — but Northway was developed in 2017 for that brewery. There’s a lot of nuances and tie-ins between a couple companies, and Northway was a brand created for the brewery, then we were in operation through 2023 and we got our farm brewing license from New York state.
“The farm brewing license allowed Northway Brewing Company to operate five different branch locations, so that is when we started looking for another branch, because we could sell direct to consumer,” Allen continued. “We looked at a couple locations in Oneonta and the downtown area … but it wasn’t going to work so, right around September of last year, we had heard that Red Shed (Brewing) was going to leave their location, where we are now in Cooperstown. It was a very easy transfer with the liquor authority laws, so the lease took effect in February and we opened the doors with a soft opening on May 10. We turned it around pretty quick.”
Offerings at the 709 county Highway 33, Cooperstown site are many, sources said.
“We have a food truck onsite, and some of the bestsellers there are the chipotle chicken sandwich and our burgers; kids love the tenders and fries, and our fries have been getting raved about,” operations manager Melissa Miosek said. “We have 20 rotating taps, and we offer New York state wine and New York state liquors and we’ve got some fun canned cocktails. We have live music twice a week and a great biergarten that’s super relaxing, and there’s lots of room for kids to run and outdoor lawn games. We are open year-round; we have inside space, as well.”
“That’s one thing that’s different from Red Shed,” Allen said. “They used to close down after Christmas and stay closed to April. One thing we heard from patrons coming back was, ‘Are you going to be open through the winter, because there’s a lack of stuff to do around here in the winter?’ So, we’ll have trivia and bands, though it might not be seven days.”
Patrons, Miosek and Allen said, have been enthusiastic about such variety.
“It’s been actually wonderful,” she said. “Everyone is raving about our beer, and we’ve got a really great selection of something for everybody. It’s all different kinds of styles and a wide variety and everybody loves that we’ve revamped the space. It’s light and airy; our whole premise when we revamped the space was ‘bring the outside in and inside out,’ so we wanted to blur those lines.
“And I would say our reach is … 50% locals, 20% people with summer homes and the remaining 30% are baseball tourists, because the Dreams Park is right over the hill,” Miosek continued. “It is absolutely (family-friendly), and we’ve had grandparents, and young kids. We welcome everybody, and we love dogs, as long as they’re on a leash.”
“People who have been to our Queensbury location, up by Lake George, where our taproom is up there, we have 20 beers on tap and some only in the taproom, so we’ve been able to bring those down here,” Allen said. “So, there’s stuff you cannot buy in the store that you can only buy in the taproom.”
Allen and Miosek said they plan to keep growing.
“We’re going to pick up trivia in the fall, and we’re hoping to have an Oktoberfest and continue our band schedule on Saturdays through the winter,” she said. “We are going to be having a more expansive menu in the fall; maybe do some different offerings. We really want to get in there and cater to the locals more. We have the quality, but we’re also trying to please the masses and, in the fall, we’d like to offer some interesting, more developed cuisine (from the food truck).”
“And, because this is only the first of five branch locations, we could add more,” Allen said. “We have the flexibility and we feel the market might be receptive.”
For more information, find “Northway Brewing Hop House” on Facebook.