By Jamie Marshall
Photographs by Sabrina Eberhard
In a region best known for its rolling landscape, rustic red barns, and white clapboard Colonial houses, Lasting Joy Brewery in Tivoli is an outlier—in the best possible way.
From the moment visitors arrive, they step into an inviting, light-filled space with high, beamed ceilings and walls of glass; it does double duty as a tasting room and community gathering spot. There is beer on tap, board games, an outdoor terrace with Adirondack chairs, and a lawn dotted with picnic tables. It’s a happy—dare we say, joyful—place, which is precisely what owners Alex and Emily Wenner envisioned when they launched their small, craft brewery less than three years ago.
The couple met in high school, and married in 2007. After years of living in California and then Brooklyn, where Alex began seriously honing his home brewing skills, they migrated north toward Tivoli, where Alex’s father, Jann Wenner, had a weekend home.
At the time, Alex was a professional brewer at Coney Island Brewery. “Part of us moving here was the idea that we could finally open our own place,” he says.
They enrolled in an accelerator course with a craft beer magazine and started visiting breweries. “It became obvious that almost every one of them was designed with one guy in mind and that guy is Alex: Hardcore beer fans and beer nerds,” Emily says, adding that, “There wasn’t a lot of thought about the visiting experience. I felt like there was an opportunity to do something different.”
They enlisted architect Aron Himmerlfarb of Auver Architecture to create a space that would be welcoming to all. A mixture of wood, glass, and steel, the structure is an ode to the local vernacular and evokes the region’s farming roots. “We wanted to elevate the idea of what a tasting room is, and build a place that’s surprisingly beautiful and share that with people,” says Emily.
A place, for example, where the local historical society might have an evening lecture or folks come to hear a band like The Tom Pretties or watch the Highland Games as part of Oktoberfest.
Nearly all the ingredients used are grown in New York. The grain is even floor malted in Germantown. As for the beer? “We focus on the classics,” says Alex. “The hazy IPA is almost the most modern style we make.” In addition to their five flagship beers, they have a rotating menu of seasonal and special occasion beers as well as plenty of NA
options.
New this year is the Gather at Lasting Joy food truck, where chef Collin Luce serves up locally sourced picnic-stye fare. It’s all part of the Wenners’ mission to make the brewery a family friendly destination for all.
“The other day someone said, ‘I picked my friend up from the train, and we came here because I wanted to show this off.’ I love it when people have pride of place like that,” says Emily. “I’m like, yeah, this in your backyard. This is for all of us.”—lastingjoybrewery.com