Inside the New East Village Microbrewery by the Bronx Brewery

The Bronx Brewery, New York City’s premier community-focused craft brewer, has opened a new location in the East Village. An exciting highlight, in addition to its downtown vibe, is a pilot brewery system, a fully-functional brewery built into the bi-level seating area that is used to expand the Bronx Brewery’s popular “Y-Series.” It is a one-barrel brew set up, compared to the twenty up in the Bronx, but it enables unique experimentation. Just last week, the brewery launched a new brew created in partnership with Veselka that will benefit Ukraine. Over the weekend, a new collaboration brew benefiting the neighborhood’s community fridges was created with Mikey Likes It Ice Cream called the “Raspberry Beret,”  a raspberry, vanilla Berliner Weisse that was poured with the option of topping up with vanilla or vegan raspberry ice cream as a beer float.

“The whole idea is to use the brewery to engage with people and get them interested in and involved in the brewing process. That’s why we put it where we did in the space.  Our brewers will be offering our guests ad hoc tastings, samplings direct from the tanks or of hops during the dry hop —we want people to learn something and have a better understanding of what they are consuming,” Damian Brown, the co-founder of the Bronx Brewery told us. “Our goal as a company and team is to use our beer and spaces as platforms for bringing people together through collaborations and doing good.”

Another feature of the Bronx Brewery’s East Village location is that it hosts the first-ever U.S. location for Bastard Burgers, the award-winning Swedish food joint. You’ll find six types of burgers using a Pat LaFrieda custom blend for this location, as well vegan versions using smashed Beyond Meat burgers. (Buns and dips are all vegan).

Built into a space formerly occupied by the bike shop NYC Velo, the Bronx Brewery’s new location has a unique architectural layout that creatively adapts to the city’s building codes. When you enter, there’s a tap room with over a dozen beers on tap (and a to-go fridge with very stylish-looking cans designed by artists like CES, Andre Trenier, Jeffrey Melo, Adiana Rivera, and Vince Ballentine, among others).

You will find a wide range of craft beers, from a crisp, refreshing Czech-style pilsner all the way to a Blacktop imperial stout. There are limited releases — when we were there, a whiskey barrel-aged Belgian ale called Cardamom B (a play on Cardi B) was on tap. There are also hard seltzers and wines available. All the beers have fun names, like the World Gone Hazy, a hazy IPA and Now Youse Can’t Leave, a line from A Bronx Tale.

The main space behind the taproom has been opened up to accommodate an elevated wraparound seating area that overlooks the pilot brewery, which also has seating in front of it. A staircase from here leads you down to the Bastard Burger kitchen, which is open for visitors to see what’s cooking inside. They’ve left the building’s steel beams exposed and allowed local street artists to tag up the bathrooms.

They’ve also partnered with local (and Swedish) artists to create the multitude of murals that fill the space, including works by street artist Andre Jr. from the Bronx.  Brown tells us that they chose the East Village for their second New York City location because it is a “super creative, dynamic neighborhood with still a bit of grit to it.”

Next, read about the top 12 secrets of the East Village!