5-Year Anniversary Celebrated By Lithology Brewing In Farmingdale

FARMINGDALE, NY — Lithology Brewing Co. recently said "cheers!" to five years.

The Farmingdale craft brewery was founded by Manny Coelho, Kevin Cain, Lee Kaplan and Marc Jackson in 2016. While Jackson left, John Ardito was brought into the ownership corps of the 211A Main St. brewery.

For Coelho, it's hard to believe that five years have passed already.

"I feel like every time I come here, every year that passes, we’ve just started," he told Patch. "There’s always something happening here."

Whether the tasting room is being updated, a new beer is being kegged, or space is being rearranged for new equipment, it almost feels new to Coelho each day.

"We’re just getting started again," he said. "Especially after this past year, it felt like such a reset that it almost was that we just started. It was a reopening in a way."

Part of the change involves an ever-evolving rotation of 35 to 45 beers that Coelho and the team have come up with over the past five years. With roughly 10 taps in the tasting room, decisions must be made on which beer to carry during what season.

Lithology has stuck to its flagship beers through the coronavirus pandemic — its A-Frame Pilsner, Brown Ale, Red Ale, Black Stout, LB IPA to name a few — in order to offer brews that customers were familiar with due to less foot traffic.

With the pandemic largely under control, Coelho said he and his team will once again get "crafty" with their brewing selections. The Magia Nera, a coffee stout; the U-Pick pumpkin porter; a holiday ale made with squash and the Rock Hammer vanilla porter all have good chances at making a reappearance on the tap list this year.

Dark brews won't be returning until the cooler weather, though Coelho said his team plans on pushing its Rocktoberfest big time in the fall.

"Out of all the beers we make, it’s unanimously voted as one of each owner’s favorites," Coelho said of the Oktoberfest-styled brew.

In-house brewing production was slowed to once a week instead of twice due to COVID-19.

A key lesson Coelho learned during the pandemic is that not everything is an emergency. Instead of scrambling, it would help to identify the tasks that could be done the following week as opposed to the next day.

"Everybody likes to move very quickly," he said. "Especially in New York. We’re a product of the place we live in. All the owners are born and bred New Yorkers. We move quickly. We want to strike while the iron is hot. What I learned is, you don’t always have to strike right away. Maybe just hold the iron for a second and then figure out what works best and go from there. I learned to slow down, basically."

Coelho, prior to starting the Lithology venture with his friends, owned an electrical company for several years.

"People ask me, ‘What’s the difference?’ The only difference is I make beer and I don’t install electrical."

There are always fires to put out for a small business owner or entrepreneur, and sometimes, tough decisions must be made. Those fires and tough calls were only heightened during the coronavirus outbreak.

"Obviously, I want to keep as many people as I hire on, but sometimes, I have to make the hard decision to let somebody go to be able to handle what you have to do," Coelho said. "Owners have to now do what bartenders were doing and be the bartender for a little bit until the money starts coming in again to be able to afford to pay someone else to come and do that so you can continue to grow the business."

Some of the passion was lost when Coelho was forced to make those tough decisions, but he said he is happier going home after a day at the brewery than he was when he was an electrician.

"My smile is better because I’m doing something that I always loved to do, whereas being an electrician was just something I picked up because it was part of a family business," Coelho said. "My wife will tell you she enjoys me better when I’ve owned this company than the other company, even though they’re both very stressful."

The key to Lithology's success, Coelho said, has been the ability to pivot when needing to and staying the course without jumping too far ahead and spending unnecessary money.

"We stay true to ourselves," Coelho said. "I think it’s trying to be more realistic about what our goals are and, can we actually reach them? And not making our goals too far out of reach so that we would then cause ourselves to fail even harder."

The four owners check each other to ensure the business stays on a steady pace. The company wants to grow larger but not too fast or slow.

Coelho shared a few long and short-term goals of the brewery. Growing the batch size of beer is a huge goal for the company. Contracting more in a location that can handle larger production of the brewery's flagship beers and/or having an off-site facility to brew at. Also, with the farmer's license the brewery holds, it has the ability to open up five more tasting rooms where it would be able to sell its beer specifically made with New York ingredients.

"That would be the ultimate goal: slowly grow into those five spots and using all of what that [New York State Farmer’s License] gives to us that we haven’t been able to tap into because we really wanted to grow as much as we can in here until we’re busting at the seams and say, ‘off-site facility’ and ‘another tasting room.’ But we don’t plan on ever leaving. This is our home base. The original tasting room."

Coehlo wanted to thank everyone who has supported Lithology over its five-year history.

"We wouldn’t be here without our local and loyal clients who constantly love our beers, come here, share them with their friends. We want to thank everybody who got us here; families, friends, supporters. We know we wouldn’t be here just by being good brewers and business owners. You have to have a following and a support group. Without that, we wouldn’t be celebrating five years, so we do want to thank everybody from our local area who has always been behind us since the beginning. We appreciate that."