Eastern Front Brewing Co. celebrated the opening of its Mattituck tasting room just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.
The Main Road tasting room, located in the former North Fork Fence building just east of Love Lane, officially opened Friday with five beers on tap.
“The beer is great,” said first customer Brendan McCann of Port Jefferson. “We came to get lunch and saw it was open. Glad we stopped.”
Owner Douglas Pearsall, a marine mechanic by trade, first fell in love with beer while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army in the early 1980s. The long-time home brewer launched the commercial venture in 2015 with his girlfriend, Christina Oman.
“There are wine people and there are beer people — we’re beer people,” said Pearsall, who signed the lease on the 800-square-foot tasting room in September.
Six months of renovations spearheaded by Oman resulted in a rustic yet elegant tasting room with cozy wood elements and refurbished garage sale finds. Pearsall restored the reclaimed barnwood countertop and 100-year-old original flooring — he even made the tap handles.
“It was nice to find a space that we could fix up and make it look nice,” he said.
Eastern Front will continue to brew out of its original facility — a restored 70-by-31-foot storage building on Westphalia Road. The brewery did not have a public tasting room until now. Instead its beers were sold on tap at local restaurants.
“We’re always excited to see new business in Mattituck,” said Mattituck Chamber of Commerce vice president David Perrin, who’s been pouring Eastern Front at his restaurant, the Bay Breeze Inn & Chophouse in South Jamesport. “Doug has a great product. Having a tasting room is a win for him and the community.”
Eastern Front has four mainstay beers: a full-bodied brown ale called Anomalous Ale, the Sexy MF Stout, the Love Lane Lager and a wheat beer, Miami Weiss. Seasonal beers will be added to the lineup throughout the year. The current seasonal tap is the Wee Heavy, a Scottish ale.
Pearsall said bottling is the next step for the brewery.
The Mattituck brewery is among a handful of beer producers eyeing tasting room openings on the North Fork. North Fork Brewing Company is planning to open in the former Second Street firehouse in Riverhead this spring and Long Beard Brewing Co. is planning to occupy the other half of that building. Twin Fork Beer Company also recently received approval to open a tasting room on Raynor Avenue in Riverhead.
Eastern Front Brewing Co. is located at 13100 Main Road in Mattituck. For more information call (631) 905-1535 or visit facebook.com/easternfrontbrewing.
See more photos of the tasting room below.
