LIVINGSTON, NEW YORK
Originally inside an old freestanding red brick building just south of the town of Hudson on the rural back roads off Route 287, Livingston’s SAUREZ FAMILY BREWERY crafts some of the East Coast’s finest lagers, pale ales and saisons since opening June ’16. During 2024, Saurez Family built a new taproom behind the old brick edifice, increased production and began bottling-canning.
A sterling mom-and-pop operation, Saurez Family create adventurous foraged farmhouse recipes alongside mixed fermented ales and unfiltered lagers. Its new barroom digs include a lacquered pine top bar (with large mirrored barback), olden wood floor, soft-toned blue walls, community tables and six-chaired tables.
Its former space, a large white room setting, featured three massive store front windows, five community tables, wall-bound art deco and high ceilings, creating grandiose splendor from simple auspices.
Former Hill Farmstead brewer, Dan Saurez, not only crafts wholly approachable, crisp, clean and brisk brews, but each of the four previously untried brews I quaff on this sunny Sunday afternoon, December ’17, maintained an uncompromising originality and majestic aura.
First up, hoppy spelt-grained pale ale, Homespun, aligned tangy grapefruit, lemon and orange juicing with vinous green grape tartness in a fresh mineral-watered setting that gained straw-dried astringency.
Next, splendid wheat pale ale, Crispy Little, brought zesty lemon, grapefruit, orange, pineapple and peach tanginess to perfume-spiced hops and oats-dried wheat cracker malts, gaining the slightest vinous grape perk.
Countryside farmhouse pale ale, Big Night Saison, let subtle brettanomyces funk affect vinous green grape tartness as well as lemony white peach, pineapple and mango subtleties plus lemongrass-peppercorn snips to its grassy barnyard bottom.
Arguably the best selection in a fine field, Bandwidth, a highly approachable pale ale, plied sweet orange-tangerine-peach tanginess, zesty lemon spritz and mildly creamed cotton-candied sugar malts to grassy hop resin.
Upon muggy July ’25 revisit, wife and I quaffed a few at one of the four community tables under the baroque gated cement-floored porch then brought some more home (reviewed in Beer Index).
Dry lemon-soured sumac tanginess briskly centered Backroads Sumac Country, a rustic farmhouse ale with vinous green grape tannins, bitter orange zesting and salty botanical licks soaking up oaken spruce tipped minting.
Summertime hoppy blonde ale, Walk Don’t Run, let mild lemon musk, strawberry rhubarb tartness and white grape esters slip inside tealeafed cilantro-sage herbage in grassy hop setting.
www.suarezfamilybrewery.com