Blue Point's new tasting room and restaurant opens Thursday in Patchogue

Glass garage doors, string lights, dozens of beers on tap, a stage for live music — and enough room for everyone you know and love.

The opening of Blue Point Brewing Company’s gleaming new tasting room, restaurant and oyster bar is upon us.

It all opens to the public at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 18, at 225 West Main Street in Patchogue.

GreaterPatchogue got a sneak peek of the 9,000-square-foot space this week with Blue Point co-founder Mark Burford, who in 2014 sold Blue Point to now-parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“It’s a real delight to have a place that’s large enough for our customers; we were always kind of jammed up at the old place” on River Avenue, he said. “It’s really exciting to have people come in, have some room to spread out and relax all year round. It’s a new day for us, for sure.”

One side of the space features a tasting room bar with hightop tables and roll-up garage doors facing Patchogue Lake.

There’s an emphasis on communal tables in the restaurant, in the other half of the space, designed to recreate the backyard feel of the old brewery, where Blue Point would often host festivals and run live music on weekends outdoors in a boat yard.

“We’re really after making it casual, comfortable, relaxed, yet bring you the good stuff,” Burford continued. “The good beer, good food, the raw bar. There’s a lot of great stuff here to enjoy with friends. It’s a good, fun place, and that’s what we’re looking for.”

The tasting room’s entrance is on the east side of the building, where visitors will first walk into a store selling merchandise and craft beer to-go. Then they can take elevators or stairs to the second floor, where the tasting room is.

Brewery tours will also start in the retail space. That counter was built using bricks from the old River Avenue brewery bar. And those bricks were first taken from the old lace mill that was knocked down on West Main Street. The current building was modeled after the lace mill and first housed Swezey’s department store before the company went out of business.

Immediately before Blue Point moved in, Briarcliffe College operated out of the brick building.

Homages to the old brewery on River Avenue are found throughout the new space, including a pew from the former tasting room that the Blue Point founders had purchased at a garage sale.

Above the new tasting room bar hangs a chandelier fashioned from the company’s first brew kettle, used to brew its first batch of beer.

There are also interior windows for beer-sippers to get a glance of the brewing, bottling, canning and packaging in action.

Burford also pointed out that diners can either order food from the counter or their phones, then the food is brought out to the table. Click here to read more about the restaurant and its chef.

Burford and Blue Point co-founder Pete Cotter, who were both home-brewers at the time, founded the company in 1998 and were trailblazers in the island’s flourishing craft beer scene.

Now Blue Point is available internationally.

Scroll down for tasting room, restaurant and raw bar photos.