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Mostly Cloudy Oceanside’s beery gem
Local brewery making a splash in the beer community
Evan Klein, founder and head brewer of the Oceanside-based Barrier Brewing Company, believes the establishment of community as his brewery’s primary focus is essential to its continued development and future success — so much so that Klein envisions his product as exclusive to locals only, and hopes the reputation of quality beer on Long Island will spread to brew enthusiasts across the world who may want to venture here to taste some.
“When people come to visit Long Island and they’re looking for local beers that aren’t produced at home, they’re going to look for us,” said Klein, who opened the Nassau County microbrewery in 2009. “It’ll be a good showcase for all of our local breweries.”
Barrier Brewing Company’s model, one that emphasizes the endorsement of Long Island culture, serves as a true representation of craft beer (produced by craft brewers, who are defined by the Brewers Association as “small, independent, and traditional”) and what it strives to achieve: a forging of bonds between communities and the people that inhabit them.
Klein, a resident of Long Beach, began his journey toward this close-knit connection in 2006, with the purchase of a home brewing kit over the Internet. Months of recipe experimentation and test batch production for family and friends followed, and soon after, what started initially as a hobby had developed into a change in lifestyle and the desire to make beer a full-time profession.
“I got progressively more into it, started researching more, producing more, and at that point,” Klein recalls, “I realized I wanted to give this a real shot.”
Enter Sixpoint Craft Ales, a microbrewery based out of the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.
After the completion of an internship at Sixpoint that involved a two-day per week commute from Long Beach to Red Hook, Klein was hired full-time as a brewer. During the two year stay in total, he was able to learn the inner workings of more sophisticated equipment, produce batches on a larger scale, and gain the commercial experience necessary in preparing for the next inevitable step: starting his very own brewery.
