Fresh Drops: The Latest Local Craft Spirit, Beer, and Cider Releases

The region's craft beverage scene has had a busy summer. Recently a number of distilleries and breweries have put out exciting new bottles that taste amazing and feel so in touch with the land and culture of the region. There's a distillery on a 220-acre former sheep farm putting out its first single-barrel rye. A blackcurrant liqueur maker crafting a new amaro straight out of the garden. A pastoral brewery turning out its lightest beer yet, and a bourbon house marking America's 250th birthday with a whiskey built just for the occasion. Here's what's new in the glass right now.

Silver Brothers Spirits Company—Barrel No. 8 (Old Chatham)

Silver Brothers opened its tasting room to the public on June 6, and its first release, a 3 Year Rye Whiskey, Batch No. 1, was already a milestone: just 450 bottles, distilled and aged entirely on the 220-acre Old Chatham farm founders Matthew Greitzer and Kim Driessen-Greitzer bought in 2020, a property that spent more than two centuries in agriculture before them, most recently as the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company. 

Now there's a second rye, and it's a different animal: 3 Year Single Barrel Rye Whiskey, Barrel No. 8, released August 1 as the distillery's first single-barrel bottling. Identical in age and mash bill to Batch No. 1, Barrel No. 8 took a different turn in fermentation, employing kveik, an ancient Scandinavian brewer's yeast, to produce a darker, more brooding whiskey layered with notes of plum, cocoa, slate, and white pepper. 

It's bottled uncut at barrel strength (55.4% ABV), limited to 120 hand-numbered bottles, and available only by pickup at the Old Chatham distillery, with no shipping and no plans to sell it anywhere else. At $88, this is Silver Brothers' first attempt at treating a single barrel as its own expression rather than blending toward consistency. I’ve tried it, and it was a resounding success. 

C. Cassis—Amaro Garden (Rhinebeck)

C. Cassis founder Rachael Petach built her reputation on blackcurrant liqueur made from fruit grown at Greg Quinn's Walnut Grove Farm in Staatsburg—Quinn being the botanist who got New York's decades-long blackcurrant ban lifted back in 2003. Petach’s newest release pushes the same fruit somewhere new: Amaro Garden, aged eight months in 15-gallon ex-bourbon barrels sourced from Kings County Distillery, coming in at 34% ABV. It's described on the label as "verdant and lithe, with gentle bitterness and bright herbal-citrus notes"—a digestif rather than an aperitif, with subtle maple tones from the bourbon wood and a nutty, lightly oxidized edge. A 375ml bottle runs $42, available at the tasting room at 108 Salisbury Turnpike or through the online shop.

Litchfield Distillery—250th Commemorative Whiskey (Litchfield)

Founded in 2014 by brothers David, Jack, and Peter Baker, Litchfield Distillery has picked up "Connecticut Distillery of the Year" honors from the New York International Spirits Competition six times over, and its year-end Founders' Reserve bourbons have become something of an annual tradition. 

Its newest bottle skips the wait for December, bringing a 250th Commemorative Litchfield Whiskey, released this June to mark America's semiquincentennial. Full tasting notes and the current list of stores carrying it are on the distillery's own site; the tasting room itself is at 569 Bantam Road.

Berkshire Cider Project—Windy Hill Single Orchard Cider (North Adams)

Operating out of the former textile mill, Greylock Works, Berkshire Cider Project makes dry, sparkling ciders from 100% Berkshire County apples with no added sugar—closer in style to sparkling wine than to a typical hard cider. Its newest limited release, Windy Hill Single Orchard Cider, comes from a single sunny hillside orchard in Great Barrington and spent 10 months aging in French oak, resulting in a dry, sparkling cider with a rich, wild-yeast palate built around the orchard's tart apple varieties. Available in the North Adams tasting room at 508 State Road, open weekends.

Kent Falls Brewing Co.—Wooded Streams Fall Lager (Kent)

Connecticut's first working-farm brewery, tucked into a cluster of red barns on a 50-acre property that also raises pasture pork and poultry and grows its own hops, put a new one on tap August 13 called Wooded Streams Fall Lager. It's the earliest signal of the seasonal turn for a brewery whose whole identity is built around the calendar on its own land—the farm's beer program runs on what's actually in season, so the August lager release is as much a statement about timing as it is about flavor. Available on tap and to-go at the Kent tasting room, 33 Camps Road, with Kent Falls' Northford, CT, satellite location typically getting the same releases within days.

Lasting Joy Brewery—American Light Lager (Tivoli)

The farm brewery from husband-and-wife team Alex and Emily Wenner has spent the past few years building a core lineup of five year-round beers, including the Two Rivers Pilsner and the beet-infused Heartbeet of the Hudson. The newest addition is lighter than any of them: an American Light Lager that Wenner describes as "super drinkable—light and easy, low alcohol, the perfect beer for a relaxing summer afternoon." It's on tap now at the brewery's 31-acre property at 485 Lasher Road, alongside food, cider, and wine from neighboring producers.

Suarez Family Brewery—100 Ft. North, Blend #9 (Clermont)

Dan and Taylor Suarez have spent nearly a decade building a reputation as one of the state's most respected small breweries, working almost entirely in mixed fermentation and unfiltered lagers rather than the hop-forward styles that dominate most tap lists. Their signature beer, 100 Ft. North, is a country-style saison brewed with a generous portion of raw grain from neighboring farms, fermented with a mixed culture, and briefly rested in oak casks—but because it's blended rather than brewed to a fixed recipe, no two releases taste quite the same. Blend #9, the newest in that ongoing series, just started appearing on tap and at the brewery's own shop; regulars who track the blends closely tend to buy multiples to compare against earlier releases. Available at the Route 9 taproom, Thursday through Monday.

If you know of another new bottle, can, or barrel worth chasing down, let us know!