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When Isaac Rubenstein’s parents founded Middle Ages Brewing Company in 1995, few other breweries existed in the area. They selected an industrial building and bootstrapped it into a craft brewery, now the oldest in Syracuse. It became their passion project.

“It was just us,” Rubenstein said of Middle Ages’ role in the craft beer scene.

The region’s craft beer industry has since grown immensely. As of 2018, Onondaga County alone held 21 craft breweries, according to the New York State Brewers Association (NYSBA), and their economic impact exceeded $144 million.

“It’s really just picked up kind of exponentially,” said Andrew Brooks, owner of Syracuse’s Talking Cursive Brewing Company, which opened in 2019.

Craft beer has boomed nationally as well. The number of craft breweries across the country nearly doubled between 2015 and 2021, according to the Brewers Association, and craft beer volume sales increased by about 8% from 2020 to 2021. Unlike big name brands such as Budweiser, craft brewers are independent, their production is smaller and they use more traditional ingredients.

New York state is at the top of those upward craft beer trends too. Craft breweries more than quadrupled statewide between 2012 and 2021, according to the NYSBA, making New York the third-largest beer-producer in the country as of 2021. And a large portion of that growth has taken place in central and western New York, multiple board members from the NYSBA said.

Though New York was once known largely for wine, beer is now “emerging in high levels,” said Andrew Coplon, founder of a national coalition of brewers called Craft Beer Professionals. Within the past few months, the state’s total number of craft breweries surpassed the total number of wineries for the first time in over five decades, the New York Liquor Authority told Syracuse.com.

“It is a beer destination,” said Ian Conboy, a NYSBA board member and owner of Lucky Hare Brewing Company.

Over half a dozen people familiar with the industry attribute craft beer’s boom in the region to the Farm Brewery Bill, which the state passed in 2012. One of the first pieces of legislation of its kind in the U.S., the bill allowed breweries to sell directly to consumers without a restaurant to accompany their taproom.

In an attempt to level the playing field between the beer and wine industries, the law also allowed brewers to develop satellite locations and lessened the cost of starting a craft brewery, fueling a movement that allowed New York craft beer to surge, many familiar with the industry said. A decade later, the region has more competition between brewers, more quality beer and more nationwide recognition, multiple New York brewers said.

“It really changed the trajectory of how quickly you could open up,” said Chris Spinelli, owner of ROC Brewing Company in Rochester and a NYSBA treasurer.

The Farm Brewery Bill allowed Conboy and Lucky Hare Brewing Company to break into the industry. With relatively cheap starting costs, Conboy was able to grow a craft brewery alongside the well-known wineries of the Finger Lakes region.

In 2012, the NYSBA spoke with legislators about the economic impact of the craft beer industry to get the bill passed, Spinelli said. Now, the board goes to Albany every year on what they unofficially call “Lobby Day,” and informs elected officials of the industry’s interests.

“I can say with all certainty that without those changes in laws, or at least without the support of the state government, that doesn’t happen,” said Hutch Kugeman, vice president of NYSBA.

In addition to lessening the barriers to entry, the Farm Brewery Bill also requires 60% of ingredients to be New York-grown, including hops and malt, both essential in the brewing process. Though using locally sourced ingredients is an industry-wide trend, New York was one of the trailblazers in the push, said Coplon.

Brewers used to import most hops from the Pacific Northwest, multiple New York brewers said, because New York’s weren’t perceived as up to par in terms of quality.

That’s changing, however, as New Yorkers increasingly appreciate what the state has to offer, Spinelli said. While local ingredients can be more expensive, they add a distinctiveness to the beer, said Tim Shore, owner of Buried Acorn Brewing Company in Syracuse.

“There’s a certain terroir to the ingredients that are grown here in New York state,” Shore said.

Farm-to-table ingredients are part of the same broader trend across the food industry, said Kugeman, who’s also the owner of The Brewery at The Culinary Institute of America.

Consumers can support the brewer, hop grower and grain grower all at once, creating a supply chain that incentivizes both brewer and farmer, Brooks and Kugeman said. By staying local, the process also keeps revenue within the community, which strengthens the connection between consumers and the brewer.

“A lot of that money is staying within New York State, which I think was brilliant, and that’s what really allowed everything to keep moving forward and kind of take off,” Brooks said. “That was definitely the catalyst.”

Craft beer in Central New York didn’t start growing significantly until 10 years ago, Spinelli said. Syracuse in particular is a couple years behind Rochester, Buffalo and the Finger Lakes, Syracuse brewers said. But the whole industry is becoming more mature.

“We’re all finding our voice now,” Spinelli said.

More breweries in the area has also brought more competition, which encourages brewers to continue innovating to keep up with their peers, Brooks said. The coronavirus pandemic also forced brewers to be more business savvy to keep sales stable, Coplon said.

That competition helped raise the bar for brewers and put upstate New York on the nationwide radar for beer, Rubenstein said. Kugeman, who has judged the state’s craft beer competition for the last six years, said he’s noticed significant improvement each year among competitors.

“We have something that’s really allowed for us to just blow up as far as the amount of breweries go, and that creates this excitement and interest from people not only in the area, but in the surrounding areas,” Conboy said. “Like ‘What the hell’s going on there? Look at all these breweries, and man, this beer is really good.’”

No magic in the water or the ingredients makes upstate New York’s beer particularly special, Conboy said. Instead, the volume of breweries has made a major difference, he said. There are about two dozen breweries within an 80-mile radius of Seneca Lake.

Most of the industry might be relatively young, but the brewing community is open about how it became successful, Shore said. Brewers help one another and support each other’s businesses. Syracuse’s craft beer growth spurt is no different than other smaller cities, he said. The same thing happened in Buffalo and Rochester a few years prior.

Recently, the industry has also shifted toward small-town breweries, Coplon and Rubenstein said. A decade ago, breweries focused on becoming a major powerhouse that marketed to a broader region, Rubenstein said.

Now, taproom breweries are trying to build community and relationships with consumers who live a few miles away, sometimes in towns with just 1,000 people. Conboy’s brewery, Lucky Hare, is in Hector, New York, a town near Seneca Lake with a population of less than 5,000.

“They love to have that local brewery they can call theirs,” Coplon said.

Craft beer already boomed in New York City and its suburbs, Kugeman said. But now that the industry has spread to rural areas upstate, New York City breweries have started expanding and building facilities upstate, joining the two areas, he said.

While craft beer is still growing in the area, the rise isn’t as rapid as it once was, according to Rubenstein. At some point, he expects the industry to reach a capacity with some breweries closing and new ones taking their place. Upstate New York isn’t done yet, though.

“We’re seeing this giant boom of people coming up from all the surrounding states to come visit the Finger Lakes just for the beer,” Conboy said. “And it doesn’t seem like we’re even at a saturation point.”

Published on May 21, 2022 at 10:35 pm

Contact Roshan: [email protected] | @Roshan_f16