USA, NY: Van Hassler Brewing to open its doors on October 28

Kateri Hassler and her husband, Laford, met over a beer and, she says, “we built our whole relationship, more or less, over beer”, Syracuse.com reported on October 24.

Now they’re opening a brewery, with Kateri as owner/manager and Laford as the principal brewer.

Van Hassler Brewing is scheduled to open Saturday, October 28 at 8045 Oswego Road (Route 57) in Clay, just a bit north of the Shops at Seneca Mall. (Van Hassler is a mash-up of Kateri’s birth name, Van Damme, and her married name, Hassler).

It will have about half a dozen beers on tap, in a brewery / tasting room that most recently was home to Cholita’s Peruvian Chicken, and before that was an Arby’s.

Beer will be the focus, Hassler said, although plans for the future include adding food and outdoor seating for next summer. For now, the tasting room will be the only outlet, although it’s possible Van Hassler will try to serve bars and restaurants in the future.

And all the beer for now is draft, with the possibility of cans or crowlers (large format cans sealed to take home) also in the future, Hassler said.

“We really just want to get established now, build our customer base and provide a new place for people to come by and have some beers,” she said. “All that other stuff (food, distribution etc.) will come down the road.”

The range of beers made by the Hasslers includes everything from IPAs and sours, to Belgian- and English-style ales, wheat beers and lagers.

The opening day lineup will include a Fall Amber Ale, an American Wheat Ale and a dark porter called Star Line. Another is Reunion, a Belgian strong ale.

Many of the recipes are based on the home-brewed beer the Hasslers have been making at their home not far from the brewery for about 10 years. During Covid, the Hasslers set up their home brewing system on their drive-way in good weather and invited neighbors to come by for some samples.

“Our driveway became, like, Cheers, where everybody stopped by,” Hassler said. “We really began thinking, why don’t we do this for real? And that’s how we started plans for the brewery.”

The brew system at Van Hassler is bigger than a home-brew set-up but still pretty small, at 1-barrel for the brew tanks and 2-barrels for the fermentation tank. (A barrel is 31 gallons).

Kateri Hassler’s previous jobs included work assembling glasses in an optician’s office. “I like to make things, to put things together,” she said. “So this is great for me.”

Laford Hassler’s family owns Syracuse’s Original CaramelCorn at Destiny USA.

Van Hassler will be open Saturday and Sunday this weekend, with hours expected to be 2 to 10 p.m. It will likely be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays at the start, Hassler said.

The opening of Van Hassler will keep the number of craft breweries and taprooms operating in Onondaga County at just about 20, despite several closings (and a few openings) in recent years.

Another craft brewery in the northern suburbs, Full Boar in North Syracuse, recently announced it will close next month. Meanwhile McGraw Box Brewing of Cortland County is opening a satellite tasting room in the former IBU Brewery, which closed its North Syracuse location in 2020.

Across the state, there are now roughly 530 craft breweries.

Although closings tend to generate headlines, the number of new brewery openings is still slightly outpacing them, said Paul Leone, executive director of the New York State Brewers Association. But that’s a change from much of the last decade, when the number of breweries grew by double-digit margins in most years.

”It’s leveling off a bit, because that growth was never going to last,” Leone said. “We’re keeping pace, but you have to remember this is a business, so there will always by openings and closings.”

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