Mortalis Brewing will open third taproom. This one will be in Buffalo.
Mortalis Brewing will open third taproom. This one will be in Buffalo.
Avon brewery will partner with Buffalo-based Illumination Meadery for its new taproom.
The burgeoning Mortalis Brewing empire is expanding westward.
The Livingston County brewery announced last week it will open its third taproom. This one will be located at 1250 Niagara St. in Buffalo’s Lower West Side neighborhood. The goal is to open Mortalis Buffalo later this summer. (But as these projects often do, a more realistic time frame could push the opening into the fall.)
The Erie County expansion follows Mortalis opening its first satellite taproom near downtown Rochester at The Richmond and the remodeling of its original space off Interstate 390 in Avon.
“Buffalo has always been really amazing to us,” Mortalis CEO Paul Grenier said. “I don’t know where the following came from. I would love to know. I would go shake all of their hands and kiss all of their babies if I could. I am all in. Let’s go!”
The new Mortalis home will be located inside a historic Buffalo warehouse that most recently housed the Company B tasting room, as well as the original home of Resurgence Brewing. That Resurgence space is now occupied by Twin Petrels Seltzer Co. (yes, that’s an entire business — or brewery really — dedicated to hard seltzers).
The Avon brewery will showcase meads from Buffalo-based Illumination Meadery. Illumination will have eight meads (or honey wines) on draft and sell bottles to go. Mortalis will be the main occupant of the space, opening it under its farm brewery license.
“It’s almost like a fun feeling of promoting from within. We’ve known those guys for a long time now,” Grenier said. “They’ve been great supporters of ours. And we love promoting from within when it comes to our staff.
“We saw this as a way to showcase those guys in the Buffalo environment that we so deeply love.”
Before this opportunity presented itself, Grenier said Mortalis wasn’t actively looking to expand outside of its home market. But as the Mortalis crew can attest, the goofiest things often present themselves at the most unexpected times. Buffalo was just a “crazy dream,” Grenier said.
“Between just trying to expand in the Rochester market (the Richmond space opened less than a year ago) and trying to understand distribution (Mortalis is now available in more than 20 states and 11 countries), we had our hands full,” Grenier. “And then just honing the product, honing the product. You would think that after almost five years, you’d have a perfect product every time, but so muh changes with the beer marketplace that you want to be on the cutting edge of what a lot of folks are doing and that can mean changing what you do.”
Grenier is also really excited about the potential of the new market. He said that area of Buffalo is just bustling with new life and new activity. Mortalis just re-booted its kitchen operation in Avon, where it offers paninis and charcuterie boards. While DoughBoyz Roc continues to do incredible things at The Richmond. Grenier said Mortalis wants to hire a full-time chef to spearhead operations at the new Buffalo tasting room.
The new space is less than 1,500 square feet, Grenier said. It would be easy to just open it as quickly as possible. However, Grenier said they want to go big in the new market as they hope to impress right off the bat. That will include moving the existing kitchen and refinishing and reconfiguring the existing bar, as well as adding both Mortalis and Illumination branding to the space. Grenier hopes the new space feels different than Avon but has some of the same flourishes that will remind people of the original spot.
“We’re gonna be in an up-and-coming area and we’ve really got to meet that moment and understand that people need to get that same experience they got in Avon way back in the day before COVID,” Grenier said. “I am so happy about this.”
Illumination Meadery partnership
Who would’ve thought that monthly beer shares at the home of one of Buffalo’s leading beer geeks would lead to a journey toward business through a shared love of honey wine? But that’s the unexpected path the three co-founders of western New York’s newest meadery have followed.
Steven Dickman, Sam Goddard, and Kevin Neubeck aren’t quite sure when they met. But they know it was probably at the home of Joe Yager, a moderator of the Buffalo Beer Geeks Facebook group. Through some of those shares, the early seeds for Illumination Meadery were planted. (It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Yager the unofficial mayor of Buffalo beer.)
The nascent project, with its production space located in the same building as the upcoming Mortalis taproom, just started selling its meads in January. Needless to say, the Illumination crew is certainly excited to receive all this extra exposure that will surely come through this partnership with Mortalis.
Goddard, Dickman, and Neubeck said they were introduced to many new meads during these frequent shares and were exposed to even more during a trip to Tampa Bay Beer Week in 2021. They enjoyed how the flavors of mead, like beer, could be manipulated through the use of adjuncts and other creative ingredients. Once they caught the bug, they decided to try out homebrewing — starting with batches as small as one gallon.
And mirroring how the Mortalis crew creatively reached so many before it even opened commercially, they often dropped off samples for lots of folks, including the Mortalis owners. The partnership started off as a friendship. The Illumination founders often found themselves in line for Mortalis beers and participated in some of the epic line shares.
Grenier said he has tried a bunch of Illumination meads. It’s easy to sense his excitement when he talks about this partnership. The Illumination guys really took a lot of inspiration from Mortalis’ humble beginnings, mirroring the way Mortalis reached new people before it even opened. Grenier and co-founder Dave Luckenbach would often take to social media to announce new beers and then drop off those creations for any willing and interested party. So before Mortalis was even open, it had already built a devoted group of fans through these drops. Illumination followed that same model. And receiving good feedback from Grenier and others really served as validation.
Honey wines are a foreign concept to so many. The Illumination owners hope to remove some of those barriers, educate the public, and introduce the community to beverages that can often mirror the craft beer world, especially in terms of flavor profiles and creativity. And that’s where Dickman said the partnership with Mortalis is such a perfect one, because each business shares a desire to push the envelope and produce products that are unlike
Illumination meads are gluten free and serve as a good alternative alcoholic beverage. Some of the meads will feature apple cider (also known as cysers). Dickman said Illumination wants to be known for intense and unexpected flavor combinations. They plan to feature both higher octane traditional meads, which are often served still (without carbonation), and lower alcohol, more sessionable options.
Before the Mortalis partnership was plotted out, Illumination planned to feature its creations inside the same space that will become Mortalis Buffalo at the Company B tasting room. Company B closed recently and then was offered to Illumination. But as a startup, it was hard for the meadery to take on that big of a project within a month or two of its opening. So that’s where the plan to partner with an established brewery was hatched.
“We didn’t want to stretch ourselves that thin, that quickly,” Neubeck said. “Funny enough, I was talking to (Mortalis co-owner) Josh (Bauerlein) when they had finished up with the Peach Leto barrel (one of the brewery’s most sought after barrel-aged creations) and I reached out to see if we could get it.”
They did. And that’s when discussions started about a potential partnership.
(And great news for Rochester folks, Illumination will be pouring in Rochester for the first time at the 2023 Rochester Real Beer Expo on Saturday, June 10.)
Luau!
Rochester’s most adventurous beer festival returns for the fifth time. And again, it’ll be held at the Roger Robach Community Center at Charlotte Beach in Rochester.
The Mortalis x Swiftwater Luau is back and will be held a week later this year, coming on Saturday, July 8.
Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Saturday. And like past events, there is little doubt that it will sell out quickly. So be ready.
Grenier said this year’s Luau will expand from 44 to 58 breweries. It’ll feature some of the most hyped places from across the country. (And one participant will even be coming from Europe.) Like past years, the organizers are encouraging participants to bring something best enjoyed on a beach and then something that attendees might never experience again, whether that be an award-winning Helles lager or a wild barrel-aged creation.
Watch out for the remainder of the breweries to be announced as the week progresses. The first batch announced on Monday included craft heavyweights like The Answer, Brujos, Angry Chair, Corporate Ladder, and Beer Tree. Grenier said the local focus has been expanded this year. And the hope remains that the festival inspires future collaborations between some of these spots and local places.
The festival will feature both indoor and outdoor beach space to enjoy a beer, as well as live music, dancers, and food trucks.
Unexpected local partnership
Like it has with other local businesses like Rubino’s, Cheesy Eddie’s, Caramel Bakery and Bar, Mama Lor’s, and a bunch of others, Mortalis has found a new local partner for a fun beer.
Grenier said Mortalis recently connected with Hi Matcha, a new Rochester startup focused on producing green matcha tea. When Grenier mentioned this, I immediately began to think about how Mortalis could utilize the finely ground green tea powder in one of its beers. I thought it might make sense to add the powder to a stout base. (Turns out Luckenbach, the Mortalis co-founder, had the same idea.) Grenier posited it could work in a sour. But when brewer Jared Cooper said Mortalis should add it to its rice lager, that got some traction.
So Mortalis will soon release its Takemikazuchi rice lager with matcha from Hi Matcha. I am really intrigued and excited to see how this works. The first iteration will only be on draft at the brewery. Grenier said if it goes over well, it could be canned in the future.
And don’t be surprised to see this collab make another appearance, just potentially in a different format. (Maybe a hyper fruited Hydra sour with matcha?!)
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