New Fort Monmouth Craft Brewery Will Open This Saturday

OCEANPORT, NJ — Birdsmouth Beer, the brand-new craft brewery at the Fort Monmouth Army base, announced they will have their official grand opening this Saturday, Oct. 15.

The brewery is located at 675 Oceanport Way in Oceanport, in what was known as the Commissary, or the former on-base grocery store for soldiers and their families. They will be open from 12 noon to 9 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.

Birdsmouth only brews lager beer, and is headed by co-founder Andrew Gioia, the former head brewer at Kane Brewing in Ocean Township, and real estate executive Rocco Laginestra.

All the lagers are brewed on site, and they also have a tasting room. There are plans for an outdoor beer garden in the future. Birdsmouth also hopes to sell their beer to Monmouth County restaurants and bars, and up and down the Jersey Shore.

Fort Monmouth is a sprawling 1,127-acre former U.S. Army base that straddles the towns of Tinton Falls, Oceanport and Eatontown. The U.S. Army opened Fort Monmouth in 1917 and the base was actually home to the first radar system to bounce signals off the moon.

However, the U.S. Army closed the base in 2011, and its acres and acres of land have sat empty ever since.

But these days, Fort Monmouth is witnessing an unprecedented building boom. The new craft brewery is only one of the new businesses located on site.

There's also:

• A high-end gym, the Fort Athletic Club, which been open for several years now there.
• Netflix plans to open a massive film production studio at Fort Monmouth
• Plans for a bowling alley were abandoned
• But an ice cream business that used to be located in Keyport moved operations to Fort Monmouth in August, and opened a 19,567-square-foot food manufacturing plant also at the Commissary.
• The area of the fort where the officers used to live, a stately row of brick homes called Officers' Row has been turned into luxury houses for sale, with prices starting in the $700,000s.
• Developer Ralph Zucker, who owns Bell Works in Holmdel, wants to build luxury condos at Fort Monmouth and add a waterfront walkway. Zucker was attempting to purchase a 15-acre parcel of land on Signal Avenue near the Oceanport entrance to Fort Monmouth.

Red Bank-based developer Denholtz Properties actually owns the Commissary building where the new brewery will be located. Denholtz and its leasing agent, Pierson, are still looking for more tenants to rent out the Commissary. The Commissary is a very big, sprawling building, as it used to be a grocery store.

Master brewer Gioia and partner Laginestra had been searching for the right location for their brewery and tasting-room startup, according to Gary Krauss, director at commercial real estate broker Pierson Commercial, which arranged the lease.

“They had been looking for the most-suitable spot within the Jersey Shore submarket, where they could achieve that local feel and be in close and easy proximity to the major arteries of distribution throughout the state,” Krauss said. “The Commissary checked all of their boxes as an exciting new development in an up-and-coming part of affluent Monmouth County. It is close to the beach and offers almost-immediate connectivity to the Garden State Parkway as well as Routes 18, 35 and 36.”