We’re just full of questions about Phony Island today. One of them is: Will we even want to go there next year without taking a Virginia Woolf–style walk into the water? But here’s a more answerable one: If not the Brooklyn Brewery, then just which Brooklyn brewery has plans to open a beer hall there? Our first guess, naturally, is Shmaltz, the good folks behind Coney Island Craft Lagers. So we called up founder Jeremy Cowan.
This summer Shmaltz opened “the world’s smallest brewery” at the corner of Surf and 12th Street — till now it’s been a self-described “performance art project,” turning out wacky microbrews such as funnel cake, cotton candy, and candy-apple red ale just one gallon at a time. But it hasn’t been licensed to serve them (the beers that come out of Shmaltz’s Saratoga Springs plant are available at the nearby Freak Bar). However, Cowan tells us that next year, he expects to be fully licensed to sell “esoteric beer styles” at the microbrewery, which will double as a tasting room.
It’s not the only thing he has up his sleeve: “We’re talking to everybody involved about doing more, and we’re planning on having a bigger presence over time.” So does that mean a beer hall? “I don’t want to commit to anything in particular,” he says, though he says it’s “possible” that the Times source was thinking of Shmaltz when they mentioned a Brooklyn brewer.
So, the mystery isn’t quite solved yet, but hey— cotton-candy beer next summer!
