New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Spacecat Brewing lands in Norwalk
NORWALK — As James Bloom tidied up the bar Friday morning at Spacecat Brewing, hours in advance of the new brew pub’s grand opening, a device on the counter rattled to life, reeling off a receipt for another advance online order of crowlers for pickup later in the day.
When one of Connecticut’s most renowned brew masters in the house, word gets around town in a hurry.
Opening its doors for the first time at 2 p.m. on Friday, Spacecat Brewing landed in Norwalk as the city’s first brew pub since the closure of Iron Brewing on Washington Street at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spacecat Brewing is the creation of James Bloom and Jeff Dunn, who worked together previously at Remedy Partners, a Norwalk insurance company acquired two years ago by Signify Health.
Bloom and Dunn recruited Roger Krackow as head brewer, with Krakow having held the same role at Two Roads Brewing, which has built up a national following from its roots in Stratford. Before joining Two Roads in 2013, Krakow was a captain in the U.S. Army, having served in Iraq.
Like Two Roads, Spacecat Brewing is located in an old mill building with banks of windows illuminating exposed brick and polished wood floors, the design by Norwalkbased Beinfield Architecture. The taproom can accommodate
more than 100 people, with a lengthy patio for outdoor service when weather allows.
Bloom and Dunn plan to have a rotation of food trucks on site, beginning this weekend with the East Norwalk seafood eatery Knot Norm’s, which recently opened a second location in Newport, R.I.
Growing up in Weston where he was a standout runner, Bloom attended the University of Rhode Island. After working for a retail running shoe store in Southampton, N.Y., he landed at the Remedy Partners, where he worked more than three years, building a rapport with Dunn who worked in his department.
“We would just talk about, ‘What do we want to do?’ — pig farming or coffee roasting or something,” Bloom said. “I got to the point where I just couldn’t work in an office anymore. I spent nearly four years there. It was time to go do something else.”
With Dunn having been a home brewer at that point for several years, the two gravitated toward the possibility of a brew pub.
Spacecat Brewing is located at 57 Chestnut St. adjacent to East Coast Kombucha, with the building once housing a clothing label manufacturer. The
structure is located in an Opportunity Zone, under a business incentive program created by the Trump administration that awards tax incentives to startups and real estate development that create jobs in qualifying districts.
Spacecat Brewing will be open Friday through Sunday in the early going, with plans to add more days in time. Krackow plans to have a rotation of a dozen beers initially and more varieties to follow. The initial tap list includes a “Harvest Moon” nod to Oktoberfest, a Belgian blonde dubbed “Back to Earth” and “Cosmic Candy,” described as a kettle-soured ale fermented with orange, peach and mango, but without the cheek-puckering intensity of a traditional gose.
As Bloom and Dunn described the lineup, the countertop machine clattered back into motion, with “Tree Cat” and “Felix” IPAs on the newest advance order, along with some crowlers of “Cosmic Candy.”
“We did a lot of gymnastics,” Dunn said of the process to arrive at the recipe for Cosmic Candy. “But it came out great.”