A Brooklyn-based craft brewery with a very popular following is coming to the Finger Lakes. Empire State Development has announced that Other Half Brewing will be coming to the Town of East Bloomfield.
The company has purchased the former Nedloh Brewing Company on Routes 5 & 20 which closed last year.
Other Half expects to hire up to 35 people over the next five years. The state has offered up to $400,000 in performance-based Excelsior Tax Credits, which are tied to job creation commitments. The company is investing more than $1.8 million in the project.
Other Half Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Burman said that his company is, “ecstatic to support a section of the state that has been so amazingly supportive of us.”
Other Half has been around since 2014, and at its “mobile can release” events which are held periodically in different cities, craft brew fans can wait hours in line to buy their offerings.
Burman says their decision to come to Ontario County was based in part on the response they got when they brought up some of their product to the Tap and Mallet in the South Wedge some months ago.
“When we did the mobile can sales we had great responses in Syracuse, great responses in Buffalo, and Rochester really just sort of blew us away. People were just excited about it and they were coming from all around (Upstate New York). That was the great part about it, everywhere from Ithaca, east, everywhere we could imagine they were coming."
East Bloomfield Town Supervisor Fred Wille says he is “thrilled” that Other Half is coming to his town, and expects a positive economic impact. Besides the additional jobs, he says if that brewery does well in Ontario County it might encourage other entrepreneurial businesses to come to East Bloomfield.
Other Half hopes to be able to open up in East Bloomfield in the near future, but there's no specific date set yet.
