The Bank and Bridge Loan Apparently Failed
Bank and Bridge Brewing, Groton
November 2022
The brewery closed in July 2025.
Man, what a great idea opening a beautiful destination brewery in Mystic. The crowds of tourists! With money to spend!
Man, what a terrible idea… opening a large brewery in Mystic. With no parking and a difficult to cultivate local patron base. Not to mention the plethora of great dining and drinking options already in town.
It lasted four years, which isn’t too surprising in the end.
I apologize that I didn’t get around to writing about my visit to this brewery until after it closed. It happens sometimes.
There are, of course, worse breweries that continue to exist in Connecticut. But Mystic has to be one of the most expensive places to operate a brewery with a food license in the state. Notice there are no breweries in downtown Greenwich, Madison, or New Canaan. There was another very different, very tiny, very basementy brewery in Mystic called Barley Head Brewing that also lasted about four years.
And then there’s the Mystic River Chocolate Cafe which houses a teeny tiny little brewery. But see, that place also sells wickedly expensive chocolate, coffee, and bakery items. Now that’s the Mystic I know.
Bank and Bridge had a food menu and I thought the fried chicken things I had were pretty good. And, not that I had the chance or revisit or that I regularly dine in the southeast corner of the state, but shout out to the chef here for his liberal use of something that should be on local menus more…
Old Bay! I grew up in the land of Old Bay, so that was a nice surprise.
But the food here wasn’t the star of the show. And neither was the beer. It was the beautiful former bank building. Now, the brewery’s owner kind of mucked the whole thing up with his personal surfer boy flair, but I liked that it was bright and open. Massive columns and huge windows dominated the facade. Then there were the large palms out front which… okay. Not exactly the Mystic vibe. But okay.
The owner was a guy who loves southern California and reggae and surfing and apparently wore/wears flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts.
And Arsenal in the English Premier League. Boo on him for that. (But props to him for bringing European soccer to his establishment.)
It should be noted that the owner appears to be quite successful in life: military combat veteran, lawyer, and… he owns a brewery in Vermont near the base of Mt. Snow – Snow Republic Brewery. (Here, the sauce was called Bank Sauce. There, it’s Basecamp Sauce. And they do have Old Bay Fries on the menu, just so you know.)
Alright, the beer. It was okay. When half your energy is put into the building and probably dealing with Mystic tourism politics and parking, and a third of your time is spent on the food operation, that only leaves… let’s see 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6 which is .833 repeating… that only leaves 1/6 of your efforts going into the beer.
They still somehow had 12 house beers on tap. One was called Mystic IPA, a beer name that reminded me of OG Cottrell Brewing’s Mystic Bridge IPA. Sorry, showing my age.
Of course, Cottrell’s IPA was an old school translucent bitter ale and this one was a hazy NEIPA with Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin and Citra hops, three things that didn’t really exist during Cottrell’s run.
I probably preferred the OG version.
The dozen they had on tap ranged the usual range, with an emphasis on various IPAs. Flights were not offered, so I went with a Gunner’s Ale.
An ENGLISH ALE collaboration with 2nd Bridge Brewing, two obsessive Arsenal breweries. The beauty of an ordinary bitter is its amazing drinkability. A light copper color and caramel/bisuit aroma give this a malty profile with notes of bread and toffee. 4%
I appreciated the attempt at a classic style and in-state collaborations are always fun. There’s no point in discussing beers that no longer exist, but I then had a Grenade Wade – their pale ale.
This was not as good, as I believe they were trying to hit the citrussy notes the market demanded while still keeping the more traditional notes of a Sierra Pale All. Unfortunately, it didn’t combine as well as something like that should. Or just pick a lane, I guess.
The beers here were largely named after the owner’s personal friends and comrades of the owner. Lots of military allusions. Shock-Hop-Alypse’s can art is a picture of a guy fighting through hops with the standard issue Marine Corps K-bar (knife) in his mouth, using imagery from Apocalypse Now. Lots of stuff like that.
The brewer for most of the run came from Beer’d Brewing down the street on the Stonington side of the river. I think when they opened they brought in the brewer from the Vermont place who previously worked at Nolo in New Haven with the Erector Brewing brand, but… c’mon. I’ll let that go.
There were big plans to partner with Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream as well as other local tie-ins, but I have no idea if that happened. If it didn’t, it should have.
They tried. They had lots of wine and liquor available, a decent food menu, lots of variety of beer, were open seven days a week…
But, yeah. This place was a very odd, yet very personal mix of… a lot. Mystic (wealthy, WASPy, tourists and yachts), Marine Corps (war and weaponry), and beach bum (palm trees, reggae, and Hawaiian shirts).
CTMQ’s page on CT Breweries and Brewpubs
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