USA, CT: Veracious Brewing Company to close its doors at the end of May

It’s last call for craft beer lovers in Monroe, as Veracious Brewing Company will close its doors at the end of May, The Register Citizen reported on May 18.

The popular brewery, known for its dog-friendly atmosphere and its offerings such as 29 Pews will close on May 28 according to co-owner Mark Szamatulski. Maltose Express, Szamatulski’s other business, which sells brewing kits and hops for at-home brewing, is also closing.

Szamatulski said he would cherish the memories, but it was time to retire.

“We’ve been working for 32 years,” he said. “It’d be nice to have weekends off and I think we’ve put our time in.”

Szamatulski said another company was moving in and taking over the space. At first, he said he planned to look for a new location, but soon realized that wouldn’t be possible.

“They wanted the whole building, and we were looking for a place to buy, but we couldn’t find a place locally that we could get into,” he said. “And we made a financial deal with them to leave a little early. So it was fine for both us and them.”

He said he had looked into buying a local building to set up his operation again, but he couldn’t find the right building.

“It’s hard to start a brewery. You need a lot of different things,” he said. “You need patios, kitchens. We bid on a couple buildings, it just didn’t work out.”

The brewery will continue to host scheduled events through the month, including an upcoming car show.

With Veracious and Maltose Express in their final weeks, supplies of the company’s products are dwindling. Maltose Express places its last order for brewing kits and other supplies earlier this month.

And that’s not the only thing the Szamatulskis are selling.

“We’re selling off the tanks and the assets,” he said. “We’ve had the store Maltose Express for 32 years. So we’ve put a lot of time into these businesses.”

Veracious’ supplies are all being rehomed locally to small breweries in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Szamatulski said he would miss many things about his business, but most of all he would miss interacting with customers.

“We’ll remember the people. Our dogs are gonna miss it as much as us because our dog just wanders around and greets all the other dogs,” he said. “Sometimes we’ll have 14 dogs outside on a Saturday when we have outside seating. So we try to be a dog-friendly place, a people-friendly place. We try to create a nice community and atmosphere and we’ll definitely miss the people more than anything else.”

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