Stay Green Brewing opens in Farmingdale
Owner Jon Green brews and serves the beers himself at his new brewery, Stay Green Brewing, in Farmingdale. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
Farmingdale has one of Long Island's strongest bar scenes, but it lost a little something when the small but mighty Lithology Brewing Co. closed in February. Now the torch has been passed and Stay Green Brewing has taken up the space.
Stay Green's owner Jon Green is a veteran of the industry who's spent the past several years brewing his Stay Green beers at other breweries, including the now-shuttered Long Beach Brewing Company in Oceanside as well as at Destination Unknown Beer Company in Bay Shore, which also closed. The lifelong craft beer enthusiast also co-owns a mobile canning business called Can It, which has helped him build up an impressive range of Long Island and NYC industry contacts.
Even before he had a place of his own, Green was very proud that he was able to brew a special beer for chef Mads Refslund, who is a pioneer of the New Nordic Cuisine movement and a co-founder of the famous Noma in Copenhagen. Green says he crafted a cream ale that was served at Refslund's short-lived restaurant Ilis in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The beer, Handtryk, featured toasted flaked rice and a product called kasu, which is the lees or leftovers from the sake brewing process.
"It was one of the most validating experiences I had before opening the brewery," he said. "I’m good forever."
Green said he'd been helping Lithology with their canning operations for the past three years, and always thought it was a great location, especially because it's next to and shares a patio with his favorite coffee shop, Flux Coffee.
Eventually the Lithology owners asked Green if he'd like to take over the space, and he jumped at the opportunity. He is now brewing all of his 11 rotating beers on-site, in the four tanks he has in the back. The lack of space means he's brewing constantly and in smaller batches, but that's how he prefers it, because it keeps everything fresh.
He says his brewery is certified as a New York State Farm Brewery, which means that at least 60% of the hops and other ingredients are grown in the state. He's also working with Restoration Farm in Bethpage by sending his spent grain there so it can be turned to mulch.
During a recent afternoon, the brewery had eight beers on the menu, all priced from $6 to $8 for a pint. Another Farmingdale brewery icon, Steve Pominski, was working the bar. Pominski was formerly the owner of Barrage Brewing Company in East Farmingdale before it closed in 2020.
Stay Green's signature beer is the Mind Gold ($7), a cream ale described as "crisp" on the menu. Green said that he loves cream ales, because they're the "only intrinsically American style of beer" except for maybe Anchor Steam. (He reasons that an East Coast IPA, for example, is essentially British because it's derived from an India pale ale.)
Green thinks the appellation "cream ale" is misleading because it doesn't actually have any cream in it. The beer had a well-rounded body and a slightly tropical finish.
Green has seen a lot of volatility in the brewing business, but he says that's not because the craft beer industry is dying. Instead, he thinks it's because a lot of enterprising homebrewers found out that they didn't have the skills or experience to run a brewery as a business.
"People were calling me green. But I would much rather stay green than get jaded," he said about when he first started brewing. "I want to keep that, quote unquote, green mentality. Not necessarily be a novice my whole life, but have the passion of a novice."
Stay Green Brewing, 211A Main St., Farmingdale, 516-824-5130, staygreenbrewing.com. Open 4-9 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, 3-9 p.m. Thursday, 3-10 p.m. Friday, noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, noon to 7 p.m. Sunday. Closed Tuesday.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
