Kingston residents and visitors need wait no longer for the launch of a much-anticipated, brand-new brewpub. The Blue Duck Brewing Company finally opened to the public last weekend at 79 Hurley Avenue, headquarters for more than 40 years of the Kingston Daily Freeman. Now known as the O & W Building, after the rail trail that passes immediately behind it, the structure also houses Overlook Bicycles, State Farm Insurance and the Ulster County Board of Elections.
Co-owner Ryan Gillette, who spent four years of his braumeister training at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado – best-known for its Fat Tire Ale – has hopes of replicating that company’s success in linking the subcultures of craft beer and active outdoor recreation. To entice passing cyclists into the new brewpub, the building has been redesigned with enormous overhead doors affording access to a large wraparound patio space with outdoor seating.
But the business plan developed by Ryan and his father Rich Gillette, with assistance from Sam Kandel of the Mid-Hudson Small Business Development Center at SUNY Ulster, takes the brewpub concept a step further: “We made the decision that we were going to offer food,” says Ryan, during all the hours that Blue Duck is open to the public. The Gillettes have worked out a partnership with the much-loved Phoenicia Diner to bring some of that institution’s signature dishes to Uptown Kingston on a regular basis. The Phoenicia Diner Canteen, as the restaurant part of the Blue Duck operation will be called, will offer a scaled-down version of the original diner’s menu, including its legendary pancakes, burgers and Reuben sandwiches.
According to Courtney Malsatzki, director of operations at the Phoenicia Diner, she and owner Mike Cioffi had been thinking for a while of opening up a satellite location, instead of just the occasional pop-up. A Kingston resident herself, Malsatzki opines that the city “could use more breweries with robust menus,” and notes that the diner was “looking for new ways to support the community.” She and Cioffi were impressed both by the site that the Gillettes had found, with its 100-space parking lot and rail trail access, and by the family’s long and successful track record with the Gillette Creamery in Ellenville, the ice cream factory that Rich founded with his two brothers. He retired and sold the company, now operating in Gardiner, three years ago.
Ryan Gillette grew up in Hurley, and it was while taking an AP class in organic chemistry at Kingston High School that he conceived an interest in the process of brewing –from a scientific angle, since at age 15 he was still too young to be much of a beer connoisseur. His teacher used various examples of fermentation to illustrate the concept of an anaerobic environment. Intrigued, Ryan and his best friend ordered a homebrewing kit by mail and began experimenting in his friend’s parents’ kitchen. “It’s such an old practice,” Ryan notes. “It was really fun to learn about that. The local raw materials in every state or country dictate what the beer tastes like. You have to create a sterile environment.”
While still in high school, Ryan began learning the brewer’s craft in earnest as an unpaid intern at Keegan Ales in Kingston. When he went off to study restaurant management at SUNY Oneonta, he continued his internship at the Cooperstown Brewing Company. From there, he decided to plunge full-time into learning the craft beer trade, attending the World Brewing Academy in Chicago. He was sent to live in Germany for a six-month apprenticeship at the Doemens Academy in Munich, where he developed a strong preference for German beer styles. In a world where IPAs still dominate beer trendiness, Blue Duck is going to move ahead of the curve, emphasizing lagers and pilsners.
After experiencing the European approach to brewing at Doemens, Ryan came back to the US and landed at New Belgium. There he worked his way into the R&D department, where he sometimes “had to brew something 16 times to get it right. It was a great opportunity to learn quality control.” That led to him being recruited by the Trillium Brewing Company in Boston: “They were opening a 500-seat restaurant in the Seaport District. They had me testing raw materials. But then I lost my job in the pandemic.”
Returning to the Hudson Valley, Ryan got a taste of a related industry by working for a time at Hillrock Estate Distillery in Ancram. “Then I ended up in New York City, at Threes Brewing Company. That was a great place to land; they had a focus on international styles, including lagers.”
By then he was giving serious thought to opening his own brewery, preferably with a restaurant component. His father, having recently sold the Creamery, was interested in coming in as a business partner. The former Freeman building had already caught their eye, and, according to Ryan, “The landlords wanted a brewery here.”
“The timing was right, the location, all of it,” says Rich. Still, the building needed a lot of work to be converted to the application the Gillettes had in mind. “You wouldn’t think it would take eight weeks to produce a good beer. Sometimes it takes a little time to produce something that you really want.”
The actual brewing process has been going on for several months now, using a three-vessel, 15-barrel system with horizontal lagering tanks, custom-made in Wisconsin. The elaborate setup will allow Ryan to experiment with new brews seasonally. He already has seven lines ready for opening day, some of it canned for outside distribution, with 13 taps at the ready for new additions. “We’ll always try to rotate with the seasons. We’ve had our Oktoberfest in production since the middle of July,” Ryan says. He’s feeling confident about the results: “I spent ten years doing trial-and-error at other breweries, so I won’t have to do it here.”
The brewpub/restaurant space is airy and spacious, featuring ten-foot-long dining/serving tables on cast-iron bases that can be raised or lowered to different heights. The tabletops, like the bar, are milled from an enormous slab of red oak, from a tree that was “growing into the barn” at Rich’s mother’s farm in Grahamsville and needed to be harvested. “It has a lot of meaning to us,” Rich says.
Atop the bar sits a shiny brass beer tower imported from the Czech company LUKR Faucets. But in general, the Gillettes are focusing on sourcing both building and brewing materials as locally as possible. Rich notes that, in order to obtain a farm brewer’s license from New York State, you have to commit to producing at least one beer that uses 100 percent New York-grown ingredients. The Gillettes are starting with two, as their “core brands”: an American Lager and a New York Pilsner.
Two IPAs are also on the menu, one a West Coast style and the other a hazy New England IPA. Summertime seasonal brews will include a Lime Lager and a Raspberry Splash Ale. Duck Tape, a West Coast pilsner developed in collaboration with Industrial Arts Brewing in Beacon, and It’s Too Damn Hot Outside for a Penguin Imperial Stout round out the initial offerings.
“I tend to use a lot of local ingredients. I just brewed my first batch using Hudson Valley Malts,” Ryan says. “I use only hops from America, and New York-grown hops are more affordable because they’re less well-known. Before Prohibition, New York was the number one hop-growing state in the union. Now it’s the third-largest in the country.”
Forming a partnership with the Phoenicia Diner to pair farm-to-table diner food with beers brewed on-premises takes the “locally sourced” approach to an entire new level. New menu items are being developed that will use Blue Duck beers as ingredients, according to Malsatzki.
Both the brewpub and the Canteen will be open until 10 p.m. six days a week, closed Wednesdays, with lunch service beginning at noon and brunch. For updates, including the announcement of opening day, visit http://www.blueduckbrewing.com.
Join the family! 
