STAPLETON — A new brewery could be headed to a Stapleton BBQ spot later this year, founders said.
Kills Boro Brewing Company — founded by homebrewers Sean Torres, Phil Gardner, Patrick Wade and restaurateur Vincent Lima — plans to open up a brewery connected to Craft House, at 60 Van Duzer St., by the fall and are in the process of raising funds for the venture.
"We’re tying to become the first brewpub on Staten Island," said Lima, who's the owner of Craft House.
"I import the rarest beers from all over the country and when I taste their beer it's right on par," he said of Kills Boro. "It's exciting to bring that component here."
The plans call for the brewery to be attached to Craft House by a glass wall — so diners can watch the brewing operations — and the beer would be primarily sold in the restaurant, the Staten Island Advance first reported.
"We're not brewing beer for the masses," Lima said. "We're brewing small batch, specialty beers."
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The idea started after Lima met the other founders during the homebrew club Pour Standards' meetings at Craft House. Lima eventually started learning about the brewing process and they started to figure out ways how to make it commercially available.
"Brewing on the professional level is their dream or goal and from then I started seeing how exactly would do it," Lima said, adding the brewery has been planned for about nine months.
The brewers — who have won numerous awards for their homemade suds — plan to start with four beers when they open, including one giving a nod to Staten Island rappers Wu-Tang Clan.
The planned beers are a foreign extra stout dubbed Tiger Style, a white IPA White Riot, a pale ale named Galactus and a coconut cream ale called Kalima Pia, the Advance reported.
They recently acquired a 1,000-square-foot warehouse space behind the restaurant for the brewery and Lima said they plan to start construction in 90 days.
When they open, Kills Boro will be the third beer maker to call Staten Island home after a nearly 50 year drought in locally made beer.
In 2014, Flagship Brewing Company opened up shop in Tompkinsville and started to bottle their beers to sell around the city the next year.
Also in 2014, homebrewer Jonathan Schulman opened up the Staten Island Beer Company in 2014, which is based out of Mariners Harbor but contract brews their pints to Broken Bow Brewery in Tuckahoe, N.Y.
For Kills Boro, Lima said he has meetings set up in the next few weeks with different investors to help them, but Lima said they hope to get smaller, local, backers instead.
"We’d like to get more small investors that are local, so everybody has a little part of it," he said.
