The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Housatonic River Brewing expanding its distribution
DANBURY — The owner of New Milford’s Housatonic River Brewing has bought the business of a beermaker in Danbury who made headlines when he opened in 2022 for making an ale sweetened with frosted flakes.
“Everything has a price,” beer-maker Rick Cipriani said about the closing of Quirk Works on Triangle Street, which had a going-out-of-business party at the beginning of the month. “The owner of Housatonic River Brewing has purchased the business asset and assumed the lease and has taken over the brewery.”
Details about the takeover by New Milford beer-maker Dave Littlefield were not revealed by either party, except that Cipriani keeps the rights to his Quirk Works recipes and brands, and Littlefield gets a turnkey operation that will allow him to expand his distribution business, the businessmen said.
The plan is not so much for Littlefield to increase taproom sales with a second location in Danbury – although that is part of the big picture; rather his plan is to get his brewing and canning operation under a single roof, giving him the ability to expand his distribution into Rhode Island and eastern New York.
“For the canning portion of our (distribution business), we have been sharing a system with a few other breweries,” Littlefield told Hearst Connecticut Media during a recent interview. “And trying to get time on that system to brew and to can makes it almost impossible to grow at all.”
About half of his revenue comes from taproom sales at his New Milford location on Kent Road, and half of his sales come from can sales, Littlefield said. The goal, he said, is to boost his can sales to
account for about 80 percent of his revenue.
For the rest of June and perhaps July, his plan is to complete an update of the brewery at Quirk Works and focus on brewing Housatonic River Brewery brands, including Amarillo Sky double India pale ale and Sacred Grounds coffee porter.
“We’re brewing right now,” Littlefield said. “Eventually, we will open the taproom (in Danbury), but it won’t be for another month or two.”
The takeover of Quirk Works comes at a time of growth for Housatonic River Brewing, which opened in 2018 on Route 7.
“In New Milford we are maxed out on space,” Littlefield said. “The place is as busy as can be on the weekend.”
For his part, Cipriani said he was “taken aback by the amount of people who came out our closing weekend to show support.”
Quirk Works made headlines in 2022 when he opened with Alaskan Coconut, a tropical ale made with coconut, pineapple, and conditioned with frosted flakes cereal, and Rain and Fire, an IPA made with rainwater captured and treated from the night before Easter.
“I plan on taking the summer off to decide what I to do next,” Cipriani said. “I’m going to sit back and relax and enjoy beer from the consumer side.”