Kidd Squid Brewing Is King of Collabs in Sag Harbor

While brand collaborations are all the marketing rage across the East End, only in Sag Harbor will you find a local business designed around the concept of cross-promoting its neighbors. And when that local business happens to be a tasting room for a small, funky craft brewery, everyone wins.

Kidd Squid Brewing Co., with its jaunty brand and historical railroad station turned eye-catching tasting room, can’t stop collaborating. In less than a year-and-a-half, the eclectic craft beer experience has become a cross-promotional tour de force that perfectly captures the signature charm of Sag Harbor and all her charismatic surroundings in beer form.

It’s the marketing masterstroke of owner and brewmaster Rory McEvoy. With free time on his hands during the pandemic, the Queens-born former event planner brought his craft brewing hobby to market in July 2022. In the short period since, the brewery has spearheaded multi-faceted brand collaborations with high-profile local cultural institutions and smaller retailers alike, all of it benefitting the community at large and making good neighborhood vibes in Sag Harbor that much better.

“The craft beer world has really always had a strong collaborative aspect to it … breweries have been doing it for a long time, it’s a thing that vineyards (and other alcohols) don’t really have,” says McEvoy. “We have the ability to share recipes, share ingredients, share ideas. We’re very flexible compared to other alcohol types and products and it works in many ways.”

While he’s been “messing around in the garage since 2013,” he’d also been accumulating brewing equipment, experimenting with recipes, and gaining vital experience at Shelter Island Craft Brewery.

“That’s when I started thinking it would be pretty cool to have my own place,” he says. “It was a lot of research and development and getting reactions from people … I had a decent amount of exposure and experience. Then the pandemic hit and I was brewing a lot, I had a lot of free time and then the building itself became available.”

Kidd Squid’s new home — a smartly renovated 19th century railroad station at 11 Spring Street (next to the Sag Harbor Garden Center) — is already a must-stop on the village walking circuit, providing both a perfect complement and a welcome change of pace to Main Street’s bar and restaurant scene. Although, as McEvoy points out, you can find Kidd Squid just about any place in the village with a beer tap.

McEvoy, meanwhile, is a kind of one-man show, pitching the ideas, crafting the brews and designing the artwork that has become Kidd Squid’s quirky brand aesthetic — from the logo to the packaging art to the recipes (and themes) for the beer.

Kidd Squid’s first collaboration, with Sag Harbor Cinema, resulted in a lager with the cinema’s iconic sign on the can. “We started with institutions, not-for-profits, so the movie theater was the first one,” he says. “The Sag Harbor sign is so emblematic … we went up there and we had this idea and we said we’ll give you 10%, and they were super happy.”

He says he generally offers a charitable component to all of the brewery’s sales and tries to find partners that sell and promote local products, like the Sage & Madison jams he turned into Sage & Madison Strawberry-Lemon Verbena Sour; or working with the Church in Sag Harbor to offer a limited pilsner run dubbed “Indulgences,” featuring a label created by contemporary artist and Sag Harbor resident Eric Fischl.

Kidd Squid has also collaborated with the Parrish Art Museum, Ma’s House (Ma’s House IPA) and Bay Street Theater, as well as smaller retailers like Grindstone and Dreamy Coffee Co. (Coconut Coffee Stout). The tasting room has 18 taps serving up an array of unique brews like the Moon Series IPAs, guest taps and experimental drafts. We suggest you try all of them, but not all at once.

“For the most part, it’s been us figuring it out first and then presenting (the ideas) … we started with no advertising, no press, nothing, just an Instagram post, and we turned the open light on and people started slowly coming in,” he says. “(Last summer) was really like our first summer. We kept our expectations super low and flexible, so we weren’t disappointed by anything, but we’ve been more pleasantly surprised than not by what’s been happening. It’s been great.”

While he’s put the work into making Kidd Squid a seamless part of the local hospitality landscape, McEvoy has also done the research, and he made an interesting discovery about local ties to the beer industry. “There was a brewery here in Sag Harbor in 1893,” he says, displaying a screen shot of an advertisement in a local newspaper called The Corrector which he found in a digital archive. “The brewery was in the Cove Hotel, and it was called the Montauk Brewery.”

Long story short, McEvoy didn’t call his business Montauk Brewery, but he did unearth some fascinating details about the life of proprietor A.C. Dalzell, who’s buried in Oakland Cemetery.

McEvoy also promises us more interesting local collaborations to come from the “best tasting beer ever to be made featuring a three-eyed squid.” Cheers!

Kidd Squid is located at 11 Spring Street, Sag Harbor. Visit kiddsquid.com for more info.