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The second time’s a charm for the brewers behind Bay Shore’s newest craft brew spot.
Cousins David Cristelot and Brendan Byrne have just opened Take Two Brewery at 1676 Union Blvd in Bay Shore with 10 beers on tap, as well as ciders and spirits.
There, customers can grab a pint of the cousin’s shared personal favorite, the Dark Sunrise, a 6.4% ABV mocha latte porter with a hint of vanilla, or what has thus far been their most popular brew, the Hurricane Ridge, a 5.0% ABV American lager.
“That was the first beer that I actually designed for the new brewery system,” Byrne said of his latest creation. “Every other beer we made we brewed either at home or in a garage … Not bad for a first shot.”
“It’s actually worked really well,” Cristelot added. “We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback.”
A decade ago, Cristelot and Byrne took to home brewing. Byrne generated the recipes, and they perfected them together. After joining homebrew clubs and testing out their creations at festivals for many years, they decided to open a brewery to call their own.
They originally hoped to open in Deer Park, but those plans fell through. Cristelot also intended to balance the brewery with his primary career in finance, but he was laid off this past summer, turning his passion project into his second act and full-time gig.
After they secured their Bay Shore location, the name Take Two — a nod to the cousins’ partnership, Cristelot’s new career, and their second envisioned space — was the clear choice.
About the brewery
When it came time to design their new space, the cousins envisioned an industrial aesthetic, similar to many other breweries on the island. This changed slightly as they repurposed some of the space’s old wooden boards to enhance the decor.
“It does have somewhat of a rustic look with a modern twist to it,” Cristelot said. “One thing that we also wanted to do was to make sure to have the brewery side visible to all our guests. There’s plenty of windows, or areas within here where our customers can actually see the production area.”
“We’ve been to breweries where it might as well be a bar,” Byrne added. “We were trying to avoid that by letting people see how the stuff is being made.”
Among the beers being made (and poured) is the cousins’ first ever-brew, the EB, though it’s been tweaked from a porter to a Baltic porter over the course of its lifetime
“The first time we made it, we blew the top of the bucket that it was in,” Byrne explained of the abbreviated name. “So we call it ‘exploding bucket,’ EB to [shorten] it down.
What’s next
As the calendar pages turn, the cousins said they will rotate seasonal offerings on tap.
Currently, guests can sip on the Pumpkin π pumpkin ale, and can soon taste Take Two Brewery’s Raspberry Saison, which they first brewed shortly after Prince’s death in 2016, nodding to the artist’s 1985 hit, “Raspberry Beret.”
They will also continue their decade-long passion of creating new brews.
“Now that we’re here in a bigger system, it’s going to give us the ability to make beers that we’ve wanted to make but never got around to making,” Cristelot said.
“We can now dedicate ourselves even more to the craft of brewing.”
