Laurentide Brewing in Penn Yan expands reach
Laurentide Brewing in Penn Yan expands reach
Nascent brewery/bed and breakfast in 200-year-old property acquires neighboring restaurant; Plus, one farm brewery closes
Note: This newsletter is supported by Rohrbach Brewing Co., a pioneering craft brewery in the city of Rochester.
When your brewery sits in a 200-year-old carriage house behind a sparkling and historic bed and breakfast, what can you do to attract even more people to visit?
If you are Tracey and Marla Hedworth, the married owners of the Laurentide Inn and Laurentide Beer Co. in downtown Penn Yan, you purchase the neighboring restaurant to add a kitchen and event space to your already burgeoning destination.
That’s precisely what the Hedworths did — they bought the former Red Rooster and most recently Timmy G’s at 12 Maiden Lane. It’s a few steps from the Laurentide property and now serves as a culinary complement to the existing businesses. The restaurant, called True Roots Kitchen at Laurentide Beer Co., allows the business to host private events and provides an outlet for chef Ben Comstock, a long-time Penn Yan food fixture. Comstock previously operated the True Roots Catering and food truck. Marla said they were beyond fortunate to partner with a Penn Yan local like Comstock with an established following and reputation.
“The entire experience we wanted to create was not just a taproom where you just had a beer and left,” Marla Hedworth said. “It started with the bed and breakfast, then the gardens, and then the taproom. Now we bring in live music and you add the food element with a truly amazing culinary team, we’re really excited.”
With the carriage house, Laurentide quickly ran out of room. There were always plans to expand, but it went in an unexpected direction with the purchase of the restaurant.
“We had thought about, in the long term, other satellite farm brewery locations,” Marla said. “But this opportunity, it’s literally right next door, was perfect. We couldn’t beat the location and just decided we’d figure it out.”
The restaurant serves as a de facto branch office for Laurentide under the brewery’s farm license. With the farm brewing license, breweries are permitted to open up to five satellite locations where they can serve other craft beverages produced in New York. The restaurant features an array of Laurentide beers on draft, too.
The Hedworths purchased the restaurant property in early 2021. It finally opened in May 2021. “It was a total gut job,” Marla said. “We took all the walls down to the studs, did a total rebuild, updated the layout, and wanted to open it all up by making it light and bright.”
Because the carriage house has more of a rustic barn-like feel, the Hedworths wanted the restaurant to feel like you were “eating in a garden.” There is table service at the restaurant, while the brewery maintains a more casual atmosphere.
“We always wanted to have a food aspect at the brewery, something like an elevated gastropub,” Marla said. “We didn’t have the space in the carriage house, so when the restaurant became available, we realized we could make it into another taproom.”
This project came after the Hedworths bought the bed-and-breakfast property in 2018, which includes the rear carriage house. After transforming the bed and breakfast into the Laurentide Inn and reopening it in 2020, attention shifted to the carriage house renovation.
Marla Hedworth said the restaurant was on the market for “quite a bit of time.” But not wanting to become overburdened, there wasn’t much bandwidth given to the potential of another renovation project. The brewery opened during the pandemic and helped the Hedworths realize the importance of having a separate event space. Marla said they never want to shut down the brewery taproom to the public for a private event, because they want it to remain a spot where people can gather.
The Main Street mansion was originally built in 1820 by William Oliver Morrison, a former U.S. congressman and New York lieutenant governor.
After the main house was restored, work shifted to the neighboring carriage house, which is now home to a tasting room and 3.5-barrel nanobrewery. Under the guidance of the husband-and-wife brewing team of Brett and Jackie Driscoll, Laurentide focuses on traditional and sessionable beers.
The current True Roots menu features a mix of sandwiches, salads, appetizers, and sides. Marla calls it “elevated gastropub food” and speaks of Comstock’s smash burger in the type of hyperbole that makes you want to order it immediately. Comstock focuses on partnering with local businesses and utilizes many different Laurentide beers in his creations.
The restaurant is open Tuesday through Saturday. But with the coming cold weather, expect those hours to be pulled back a bit. And this is just an educated guess on my part, but I’d bet Laurentide isn’t done growing. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more satellite taprooms in the region, especially in the Finger Lakers.
Rooms at the Laurentide Inn can be booked online here: https://thelaurentideinn.com/book-now/.
Long read of the week
Subhed: Lipton Hard Iced Tea in Rochester??
Did you know Pepsi quietly launched an alcohol distribution business earlier this year to ship and deliver the Hard MTN DEW. The drink currently isn’t available in New York state. But Pepsi’s nascent distribution arm, Blue Cloud Distribution, could upend the traditional three-tiered distribution system in our country. And those distributors are pissed off and scared.
Kate Bernot, my favorite beer writer, adeptly outlines Pepsi’s prerogative and why it’s scaring some companies shitless. She recently published “Coming Storm — PepsiCo’s Blue Cloud Raises Existential, Legal Question Of Who Can Be A Beer Distributor” on Good Beer Hunting.
The questions Kate poses are endlessly fascinating, but I was struck by another passage in the article. As Kate writes, “For more than a year, PepsiCo quietly laid the logistical groundwork for Blue Cloud Distribution, its new alcohol distribution division, which officially launched in February 2022 to distribute Hard MTN DEW. Blue Cloud has since signed on Lipton Hard Iced Tea, a flavored malt beverage (FMB) brewed by FIFCO USA, set to launch in early 2023.”
Well guess what, FIFCO USA is based in Rochester at the sprawling Genesee Brewery campus on St. Paul Street, which means Lipton Hard Iced Tea will be produced here. And this certainly makes a lot of sense when you consider how much money — more than $20 million — FIFCO has spent to modernize and upgrade its capabilities on the flavored malt beverage end of the facility. If you recall, FIFCO shared last year that Seagram’s Escapes is now the top-selling brand out of the Genesee Brewery complex. It has surpassed all of FIFCO USA’s beer brands, including Genesee and Labatt USA, in both volume and profitability, I wrote for the D&C.
Times are certainly changing in the beer industry and Kate always does a wonderful job of explaining these shifts. It’s just wild to see how those ripples reach home.
Birds and brews
Here’s a wonderful chance to drink some beer and support one of the coolest organizations in our area, Wild Wings. From noon to 2 p.m. Sunday, $1 from every beer sold at Three Heads, 186 Atlantic Ave. in the city’s Neighborhood of the Arts, will be donated to the bird rescue and education group at Mendon Ponds Park. Details in the tweet below:
Title sponsor: Rohrbach Brewing Co.
This work is made possible through support from Rohrbach Brewing Co. Rohrbach features two locations — its Beer Hall at 97 Railroad St. in the city of Rochester and its brewpub at 3859 Buffalo Road in the town of Ogden. Since 1991, Rohrbach has been producing classics and influencing the Rochester beer scene, including its iconic Scotch Ale.
The brewery’s support allows this work to remain free for this audience. So make sure to get out to Rohrbach and support one of the best establishments in our area.
I remain open to sponsorships, sponsored content, and advertisements, especially if it’ll keep the newsletter free for readers. And if you have information about upcoming releases, events, or happenings, don’t hesitate to reach out. For more information, feel free to drop me a line at clevelandprost@gmail.com.
And if you enjoyed this edition of the Cleveland Prost, please subscribe and share! See you again soon.