Run & Hide Brewing Co. Opens Taproom in Port Chester

Tim Shanley poses with a bottled variant of his Italian pilsner, Stick with Grandma. This one was aged for nine months in an oak barrel that was placed inside a beer cave. It was conditioned on lemongrass, lemon zest, coriander, and turmeric.

Tim Shanley admittedly had butterflies right before he opened his small taproom in Port Chester.

“I was talking to a childhood friend that I’ve known for 50 years and told him ‘I’m nervous,’” Shanley says. “He said to me, ‘What are you nervous for? When you were in eighth grade, you bought a blitz beer ball (a plastic jug that holds around five gallons) and you charged $2 a person for people to come into your mom’s backyard to drink.’”

Ahead of Run & Hide Brewing Co.’s public opening, that recollection put Shanley’s mind at ease. He then recalled throwing keggers for upwards of a few thousand students and going through a couple hundred kegs when he attended SUNY New Paltz and bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones rocked the campus.

Pours at R&H are available in 8, 10, or 12 ounces

Shanley has been selling beer his whole life. And if you ask him how he got into beer in the first place, he’ll simply say, “I’m Irish!”

While he may have started out drinking mainstream American lagers, Shanley recalls getting into home brewing after he tried a classic Belgian farmhouse ale. “A buddy of mine came back from Belgium, and that’s when I first had Saison Dupont,” he says. “I was 18 then, and oh my god! I couldn’t buy it, so I started brewing Belgian style beers. I was always into fermentation and preservation, whether that’s fermenting pickles or curing meats. I was always fascinated by old world methods that Italians, Germans, and Europeans as a whole did stuff like that because they didn’t have refrigeration, so they cured meats or did things like take hunks of pork and preserve it in fat.”

Shanley would continue to brew as a hobby from that moment forward, and with the craft beer boom, it led him to try his hand at an array of styles beyond Belgians. Even as he entered the hospitality industry, eventually becoming a recognizable face as a co-owner of Coals Pizza in Bronxville, his interest in beer never waned.

While at Coals, Shanley always curated an epic craft beer list, made plenty of brewer connections, he it’s when he started getting even more serious about brewing, as in he wanted to open a brewery of his own.

Five years ago, Shanley applied for and won a grant to build Run & Hide (an old prohibition term that should be pretty self-explanatory) in Port Chester. It was a dream come true for this proud New Yorker to take his hobby to the next level. But like everything in the past few years, those plans were interrupted by the pandemic.

“I still have the grant, but with COVID, the plans for a brewery at 30 Broad Street came to a screeching halt,” Shanley explains. “Everything stopped. Investors pulled out. I said to myself, I’m not gonna sit around. I filed for a gypsy brewing license and started brewing. I thought I’d gypsy brew for about a year, the brewery would get built, and I’d slide in there. Three years later, I’m still gypsy brewing.”

Shanley began brewing on the road at other breweries like Crossroads Brewing Company and Lock City, hence the term “gypsy brewer.” He started small by putting out an earthy, herbaceous, florally bright saison called Fuque de French. That particular farmhouse got its name from a conversation Shanley had with a man in Belgium who, when talking about French culture, said, “Ehhh, fuck (but sounded like fuque) the French,” to which Shanley told him, “I’m going to name a beer that someday.”

I got to tag along last summer when Shanley and David DiBari went to taste the progress of their cave aged pilsner collaboration. The cave was built in Dobbs Ferry in the 19th century by Beigen Brewery to store beer (mostly lagers) in warmer months. It was built under a hill, an on the hill are a drove of black walnut trees that provide shade and thus, keep the cave cooler. Even in the summer, we could see our breath down there.

Following Fuque were Larry’s Liquid Love, a juicy double IPA with oats and wheat, double dry hopped with Citra, Columbus, Motueka, and Centennial hops; Nice Looking Chops, a pastry stout with generous additions of UTZ Pretzels, brown sugar, cacao husks and powder, vanilla beans, coffee, sea salt, and lactose; and an easy drinking, crispy Italian pilsner called Stick with Grandma.

All three were available for local delivery and pickup, while some hit the shelves of New York beer stores, and occasionally you’d find it available on draft at Coals and other local restaurants and bars.

The now bottled cave aged pils

Now with even more steam after distro, Shanley continued to move forward by opening a 40-seat tasting room at 223 Westchester Avenue with his wife, Rosanne, and sons Thomas and Jake

Run & Hide officially opened on August 2, 2022, with four brews on tap and each barstool occupied by a thirsty patron.

Early on, expect Fuque, Stick with Grandma, “Don’t Front” hoppy ale, and an unfiltered double IPA in “Your Mom’s Best Friend.” There’s also plenty of cans in the to-go fridge and limited bottles of a cave-aged version of Stick with Grandma, a collaboration with chef David DiBari of The Cookery and The Parlor.

Run & Hide will soon have their own line of cured meats after working with a Pennsylvania meat processing company. Their line will be called Run & Sons. Up first and available in the taproom this fall will be a finocchiona salami.

Food at R&H is simple. There’s no kitchen, but instead there’s a deli corner where they have fine meats and cheeses for sandwiches on sourdough from Kneaded Bread, plus charcuterie, toasts, cheese boards, olives, and the space will occasionally host pop-up food and beer pairing events.

Taproom guests can soon anticipate more of Shanley’s creations to switch up on the lines and some collabs like a variant of Fuque de French aged in chardonnay oak barrels, that’s made at the nearby Decadent Ales in Mamaroneck. Shanley will also soon start to brew out of Decadent.

Oh, and that other Run & Hide location is still a go, by the way.

“The project did happen!” Shanley says. “We’re pouring the footing and the shell should go up this winter. It’s still roughly 18 months until I’m in there brewing. It’ll have a full kitchen and plenty of outdoor seating overlooking the train station.”

Until the bigger brewery is built and open, R&H is pouring Tuesday – Thursday 4:30 – 9, Friday 2 – 10, Saturday and Sunday noon – 10. As a bonus, on days The Capitol Theatre has a show, they’ll open at 4:30.

223 Westchester Avenue; Port Chester
914.305.1352; randhbc.com