Page 21 - BusinessWest September 4, 2023

Abandoned Building Brewery has steadily added to its portfolio of Belgian-style beers over the past decade.
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of the fabric of the community and succeeded in helping to make East- hampton, a former mill town that has evolved into a center for hospital- ity and the arts, into a true destination.
Overall, the craft-beer landscape has changed con- siderably since ABB first opened its doors, with a huge increase in competition across the 413. But that competi- tion has only helped in some ways, as we’ll see, and this venture has a name and track record for excellence that are well-grounded.
“One of the great things that has been an advantage to us is that we did get in here early on — we’re coming up on 10 years early next year,” he explained. “So we had a good amount of time to establish ourselves as a craft brew- ery that puts out consistent beers throughout the year. And we’ve had a lot of customers who have been here since early on that we still have today.”
Perfecting His Craft
Tarlechi is an engineer by trade. But like many who start breweries, he was bitten by the home-brewing bug, and what started as a hobby while he was in college — California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo — eventually became his career.
“The science-y part of me was into the chemistry behind brewing, and the tinkerer in me was into all the fun setups of the home-brewing process,” he explained. “And throughout the end of college, and then grad school, and into my professional career, I was always doing home brewing on the side, entering competitions, earning a couple of medals.”
After college, he returned to the Philadelphia area, where he grew up, and started work as a civil engineer in Valley Forge while home brewing on weekends.
His life, and career, took a dramatic turn after several visits to high- school friends who were attending Hampshire College. He would bring his home brews with him for these gatherings, and, after a while, his friends began to encourage him to take his brewing beyond his home — and into their backyard, figuratively speaking.
“They were saying, ‘there’s not a lot of breweries up here; you should
Ten years on, Tarlechi told BusinessWest, his brewery has really found its place, and the business plan essentially calls for more of every- thing that has gone into the success formula. And there are many ingre- dients — from the beers to the food trucks to the growing
appeal of the created event space, which will soon host a
wedding, but is better-known for wedding-rehearsal par-
ties, showers, birthday gatherings, and the like.
For this issue and its focus on breweries and wineries
— a growing and ever-more-intriguing component of the
region’s business community — BusinessWest opens the
tap on Abandoned Building Brewery, which arrived with a
brand, but has increasingly made a name for itself within the 413.
“The science-y part of me
was into the chemistry behind brewing, and the tinkerer in me was into all the fun setups of the home-brewing process.”
BusinessWest << WINERIES & BREWERIES >> SEPTEMBER 4, 2023 21