East Rock Brewing Co. expected to open mid-summer in New Haven

East Rock Brewing Company co-owners and brothers Ti , left, and Shaun Wilson outside the brewery on Nicoll Street in New Haven as equipment is delivered recently. East Rock Brewing Company co-owners and brothers Ti , left, and Shaun Wilson outside the brewery on Nicoll Street in New Haven as equipment is delivered recently. Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 87 Caption Close East Rock Brewing Co. expected to open mid-summer in New Haven 1 / 87 Back to Gallery

NEW HAVEN — Tim Wilson now has two newborns to love and care for.

First there is his month-old son, Wyatt Wilson, who was born at the end of April.

Second, the East Rock Brewing Co., has received the brewhouse equipment to get the business started and plans to open its doors to the public in mid-July.

After revving up his welcoming neighbors with his plans for a brewery and tasting room in February 2016, the literal long haul is almost over with the enormous steel brewhouse vessels now in place.

Wilson originally had hoped to open by May 2017. Some delays were attributed to structural engineering challenges. They also had to make a second stop at the zoning board and financing through the SBA was longer than anticipated.

Before that, his initial planning started in 2015.

“The momentum has picked up big time,” Wilson said. “We are much happier now. It was a little nerve-wracking for awhile there.”

Construction should wrap up in a few more weeks and it takes a month to make the beer.

The tanks, fabricated by DME Brewing Solutions in Prince Edward Island, Canada, were backed up to the company’s loading dock and into the cavernous block-deep facility at 285 Nicoll St. on May 21.

Click through to see some of the Connecticut Beer Trail's best stops. Click through to see some of the Connecticut Beer Trail's best stops. Photo: Derek T.Sterling Photo: Derek T.Sterling Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Connecticut Beer Trail 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

Wilson, 33, his older brother, Shaun Wilson, 39, and a small team of helpers then put the tanks into place in the family-run business.

The brewery’s name is taken from the neighborhood where it sits, while the logo is a billy goat, which not only reflects the Goatville nickname for this part of East Rock, but it is also associated with a type of beer pioneered in Germany known as bock beer.

“That was our way of recognizing the history of the neighborhood and paying homage to German brewing,” Wilson said in a recent tour.

As for Goatville, community goats that shared the land with the residents are said to have devoured clothing from clotheslines in the neighborhood.

The brothers grew up in Orange, but lived in New Haven at different periods in their lives, with Shaun, who is a co-founder of East Rock Brewing Co., attending Yale University where he earned a doctorate in chemistry. He will be the general manager in charge of the finances.

Tim Wilson studied brewing science and technology at The Siebel Institute in Chicago and Doemens Academy in Germany. For a decade he worked in the industry in the Boston area, most recently as the quality manager for Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers. In addition to being the co-founder, he is also the head brewer at his company.

Needless to say, the beer will be German influenced for its quality and the attention paid to details, he said.

Don’t look for any esoteric styles at East Rock Brewing Co.

“I wanted to bring more of those traditional styles of beer here to Connecticut. ... The bulk of the beer we will produce is going to be very approachable types of lagers and wheat beers,” he said.

He said the company plans to be get back to the basics of brewing, producing a high quality brew and a style that will appeal to a wide demographic.

While he loves German beer, he said he also recognized that the ability of those breweries to innovate is limited by tradition and that country’s beer purity law.

In New Haven, he said he wants his beer to take the best of the German brewing ethos and combine it with the creativity of the American craft beer industry.

The brewhouse equipment, which Wilson said is considered the star of the show at a brewery, consists of two vessels: a mash/lauter ton, and a kettle and a whirlpool combination.

All of the barley, hops and water are mixed in the brewhouse and boiled, cooled down and pumped into one of the fermenters where yeast is added. Once that is done, the process of fermentation starts to take place.

Workers were putting an epoxy coating on the concrete floor last week and much of the interior space was starting to take shape.

The large space is filled with natural light and will feature communal-style seating, as well as high-top tables, for about 100 customers in the 3,400-square-foot beer hall at the entrance off Nicoll Street.

Tim Wilson said he hopes it becomes a space where the community can come together to celebrate. He said they will serve pretzels and on select days customers can order from food trucks.

There will also be a small space that can be rented for functions. Offices for the staff, a break room, restrooms and a lab for quality control testing also were shaping up.

The white oak, horseshoe-shaped bar was still in pieces. It will be up front, where there also will be a small retail area so visitors can purchase bottles and growlers — 64 ounces of draft beer — to go.

This whole area is divided from the factory portion by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall where customers can watch the brewing process at the back of the space that lines up with Mitchell Drive, as well as the bottling operation.

“It one of the more fun processes to watch,” Tim Wilson said of the mechanical process in which the bottles are filled.

There is a 100-car parking garage, accessible from Mitchell Drive, underneath the brewery where customers can take an elevator to the main floor. Parking was key to the city approving the brewery in the residential neighborhood.

The company will do its own distributing in the short term to New Haven County and after that to the rest of the state.

“We very much want to be deeply rooted in Connecticut,” he said, to achieve a density of sales and grow into a sustainable company.

The equipment they purchased will allow them to produce 4,500 barrels a year, while the facility has the capacity to brew 45,000 barrels. In their first year, they plan to put out between 750 and a 1,000 barrels to start and a few thousand in 2019. Getting to 20,000 to 30,000 for them would equal a sustainable company.

Three brands will be sold wholesale to bars, restaurants and liquor stores — East Rock Pilsner; a traditional German-style wheat beer, Weisse Bier; and a “hoppy lager,” Hopfen Lager.

In fall they will also sell an Oktoberfest beer. In the winter there will be a malty black lager. The spring and summer seasonal brands have yet to be determined.

The beer hall will have 12 taps sold exclusively on site, as a growler or in half-liter bottles to go. They will feature the year-round brands, as well as a variety brewed exclusively for the beer hall.

The brewery has made it to this point with the help of the immediate family pitching in. It is also part of a larger historical picture of breweries in the area where Rock Brewery was located across the Mill River.

“My wife was very generous supporting me,” Tim Wilson said as the business delays continued for more than a year. A social worker at a nearby school, Lisa Wilson can now spend some time with Wyatt, as both he and the business start to grow.

“He is a joy,” Tim Wilson said of the new addition to their family.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577