Fairfield Craft Ales brews up Kickstarter campaign – Stratford, CT

Starting soon, there won’t be just one brewery in Stratford. Nope, Fairfield Craft Ales is a nanobrewery with music at its core (brews are named after songs) that will start brewing at 724 Honeyspot Road. 

To help them on their quest to open ASAP and open as badass as possible, they’ve set up a Kickstarter. There are options available from $10-$5,000, and gives you choices like stickers, pint glasses, t-shirts, lifetime mug club memberships, brewing days with the crew, and even more amazing experiences. 

Fairfield Craft Ales is already getting close to opening in May, but this extra push (they’ve already invested $100k) will definitely help to steer them in the right direction. When Mike Borruso and Joe Bow do finally open, they’ll have a three-barrel brewery with about 8 taps for drinking, tasting, and growler fills.

Here’s more from a recent press release about Mike, Joe, and their mission to make some kickass beer at Fairfield Craft Ales:

Borruso and Bow are avid, award-winning home brewers who met when Bow was coaching both their sons in youth baseball. They started talking about brewing when they ran into each other on their Metro North commute to New York City, and hatched a plan to start a brewery in the summer of 2014. That began an extensive search for properties throughout Fairfield county, and a little bit in New Haven. They looked at buildings in Bridgeport, Fairfield, Milford, Norwalk, Stratford, Trumbull, and Westport. “We probably saw more than two dozen spaces,” says Bow, “and every time we thought ‘this is the one,’ some problem would come up, like the zoning wasn’t right, there wasn’t enough parking, or the landlord just didn’t want a brewery.”

But in the fall of 2015, everything came together and they signed a lease for 724 Honeyspot Road in Stratford. Borruso says, “This space really has everything we were looking for—the right size and layout located in a diverse and creative community, not to mention a thriving craft beer culture created by our neighbors up the street at Two Roads Brewing Company. Stratford has it all, as far as we’re concerned.”

Since signing the lease, Fairfield Craft Ales has been hard at work acquiring equipment and building the brewery and taproom. Almost all the equipment needed is already in the space and construction is almost complete. Borruso and Bow plan to get their equipment hooked up and the space painted by the end of March. But even assuming all that gets done on time, they can’t start brewing without government approval.

“To quote Tom Petty, ‘the waiting is the hardest part,'” said Borruso, who notes that they filed for their federal brewer’s permit in October. “We’re hoping to get our approval by the end of March, start brewing in April, and open in May. Then we can start serving our beer, which is the whole point.”

In the meantime, they’re paying rent and utilities, and continue to incur startup expenses. Those expenses include professional installation fees for some pieces of equipment, brewing ingredients and supplies, barware, and merchandise for resale like T-shirts and growlers. “This Kickstarter campaign is all about getting us through this initial startup period so we can deliver the amount of beer and brewery experience that our customers deserve,” says Bow. “The best part of this whole thing will be seeing people enjoying our products.”