At Fat Orange Cat Brew Company, you’ll feel like you’re visiting a friend’s country homestead … because you kinda are. The owners live here in this rural setting, along with their children and a menagerie of goats and chickens, operating a seasonal brewery from spring through autumn. You walk up a stone-paved hill to a country barn where you can either purchase cans to-go or a sampling flight (sorry, no long afternoons of pounding drafts here) to sip as you roam the grounds. Seating and tables allow you to crack open a brew with a BYO picnic or, in cooler weather, warm yourself by one of the fire pits. It’s super country casual at its most laid-back; however, leave your kids and dogs at home – it’s a safety issue of the four-legged residents of Fat Orange Cat Brew Company. During the pandemic, the tasting barn has been closed for the family’s safety but the owners instead offer limited online ordering hours to schedule a drive-by tentside pickup time.
THE STORY
Avid homebrewer Mike Klucznik and his marketing-minded missus Sheila Mullen opened Fat Orange Cat Brew Co. out of their barn for tastings and growler sales/fills in summer 2016. They specialize in small batch recipes (their own well water being a key ingredient) with an emphasis on supporting and promoting local agriculture. Fat Orange Cat Brew Company is a member the Twelve Percent Beer Project collective, with whom FOC contract brews and distributes through. This enables larger scale production for canning sales of what they produce in the farm’s “test kitchen.” Much of their colorful and distinctively feline can artwork is by Leslie Herman, who created album covers for Phish.
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