Dining & Nightlife | Features

Great South Bay Brewery
Bay Shore
est. 2010

Brewery Dissection
[“Paging Dr. Rick Sobotka. Paging Dr. Rick Sobotka. Paging Dr. Rick Sobotka. Paging Dr. Sobotka. Paging Dr. Rick Sobotka…”]

I refuse to reveal why Dr. Rick Sobotka, anesthesiologist and brewmaster of Great South Bay Brewery, was paged by an italicized loudspeaker. Surgery using a Cascade-hopped anesthetic agent? A deathmatch challenge by Neil Patrick Harris for undisputed medical supremacy? You will never know.

However, I will allow the italicized loudspeaker to provide two factual facts pertaining to Great South Bay Brewery.

1) “Great South Bay Brewery was founded by Sobotka, a fourth-generation brewer from Apalachin, New York in 2010.”

2) “Sobotka aspires to ‘brew the finest beers on Long Island by staying on the cutting edge, being creative and not compromising at all.’ Evidence is Great South Bay Brewery’s Tasting Room Exclusive Brew Series, an almost-weekly release of bottled batches initiated in February with Goofy Foot, a silkymilky stout.”

Expansion
Though Great South Bay Brewery’s production is split between Bay Shore (see: Small-batch stuff at its brewery) and Brooklyn (see: Contract-brewed stuff at Greenpoint Beer Works), the brewery acquired a 39,000-square-foot warehouse in July. Production within the new building, formerly used to distribute aerospace equipment, will commence by the end of 2012 and increase beer making from 186,000 to 527,000 gallons. “We still have some demolition to do so we can build the tasting room, but we’ll be ready to go,” Sobotka says. Great South Bay Brewery will install a canning line and a bottling line (the latter for large-format releases) to befriend a 30-barrel brewhouse, and construct an apparatus which produces beer, is capable of flight and and resembles the love-child of Johnny No. 5, John Belushi and a pterodactyl.

Drink This. Seriously. Do it.
Massive IPA, a flavorer of pine, citrus and malt, and the recipient of a bronze medal for Best Individual Craft Beers in New York State at TAP NY 2010. “It’s everything that a drinker wants in an IPA, with balance being the key,” says Philip Ebel, chief operations officer. “A lot of IPAs are too hoppy or don’t have enough hops, but I think we found a perfect mix.”