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Staten Island Beer Company to Open Mariners Harbor Taproom Next Month

By Nicholas Rizzi | August 25, 2016 5:19pm | Updated on August 26, 2016 4:44pm
 The company will open their taproom at 20 Kinsey Place on Sept. 10.
Staten Island Brewing Company
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MARINERS HARBOR — A Staten Island brewery plans to open a new taproom next month, giving local drinkers the chance to try out their latest creations before they brew out full batches.

The Staten Island Beer Company will open their taproom on Sept. 10 giving beer-lovers the chance to try out pints of their Victory Blvd. Pale Ale and Shaolin IPA inside their 20 Kinsey Place headquarters.

"We wanted people to have pride in something out here," said Maury Schulman, head brewer of the company.

"A lot of times people think of Staten Island they don't think of anything positive and we wanted to try and give them a beacon to kind of hold their head up to a little bit."

Aside from selling pints of their main beers, the brewery will also host "Try Day Fridays" where people can buy a cheaper glass of their 12 to 20 gallons test-batch of beers they're working on and give feedback on the brew.

"Based off that feedback, we'll adjust our recipe accordingly," Schulman said. "We definitely want to work with the community, that's a big part of it."

The Staten Island Beer Company plan to have their taproom open every week on Thursdays to Sundays.

The brewery was started in 2014 by Jonathan Schulman, an avid homebrewer, using recipes he developed in his basement.

The company currently contracts out their pints to be made in Broken Bow Brewery in Tuckahoe, New York, while Schulman, his wife Karen Schulman and two sons handle distribution, sales and crafting new recipes in their small Mariners Harbor space.

"It's a joy to have a good product, to have family producing it and have them taking pride so that when Karen and I are long gone they can have something that they can really be proud of," Jonathan Schulman said.

Maury and David Schulman took over their dad's old brewing equipment, started to learn the process of making beer and currently develop new recipes for the company, including an American Wheat Beer the pair were working on this month.

"They're a lot more in-depth brewing than what I did," said proud father Jonathan Schulman. "Mine was strictly in the basement, with a few recipes and they've gone beyond me technically and quality wise."

Since they opened, they increased the number of beers offered and the amount of gallons sold, introducing an IPA and summer ale this year. Last year, the brewery made 4,650 gallons of beers and are track to make more this year, Schulman said.

Their beer is currently served in almost 30 bars and restaurants in Brooklyn and Staten Island — including famed Port Richmond pizzeria Denino's — and they hope to be able to increase their production in the future.

They also started to look for a larger space around Stapleton where they hope to move their taproom and start brewing their beer themselves out of the space.

When they open the spot, Maury Schulman plans to display their father's "piecemealed" brewing system he made 20 years ago that the family learned to make beer on.

"It's kind of a Rune Goldberg machine that we’re definitely going to display in our bigger brewery once we make it," he said. "That's the original, that's the mothership."

While the borough was devoid of locally made suds for almost 50 years, Staten Island has had an uptick in breweries in the past few years.

The Flagship Brewing Company opened up shop in 2014 and started to sell bottles of their brews around the city the next year.

Also in 2014, the Staten Island Beer Company released their first batch of beers in bars around the borough.

A third brewery, Kills Boro Brewing, plans to open up a shop connected to Craft House restaurant in Tompkinsville and are slated to open in the spring of 2017.