Sunday, March 16, 2025

Bike and Brew: Shunock River Brewery and Bank & Bridge Brewing

It's back! For whatever small audience reads this blog or stumbles across it, I have a new Bike and Brew adventure to report!

I haven't been keeping up with this blog much, but I have been trying to finish out these trips. Nevertheless, this one in the fall of 2024 was the first one I completed in about three-and-a-half years. What was once a good way to get out of the house while my wife slept after a night shift has become much less feasible after, you know, welcoming three children into our lives. But I recently got a chance to for a getaway, and was eager to explore some new spots. 

Bike and Brew has also had slimmer pickings since the craft beer industry, which was undergoing explosive growth in Connecticut when I started in 2016, has plateaued, if not retracted to a certain degree. The effect has been mixed in the southeastern part of the state. Tox Brewing Company recently opened a new and expanded space in downtown New London, and Fox Farm Brewery has won such widespread acclaim that some fans have compared it to the craft beer mecca that is Tree House Brewing Company in Charlton, Massachusetts.

At the same time, growing competition has caused several breweries to close their doors. Noble Jay Brewing Company quietly vanished in the midst of the COVID-19 disruptions. Cottrell Brewing closed in 2022 after its lease expired. Barley Head Brewery sold its space to some folks who opened a bar on site. Others blipped out before I had a chance to visit them, including Stranger Tides Brewing in Colchester, the Stony Creek brewpub at Foxwoods, Steady Habit Brewing Company in East Haddam, and Fat Orange Cat Brewing in East Hampton (which still produces beer but has closed its taproom location). 

For this trip, I paid a visit to Shunock River Brewery and Bank & Bridge Brewing, which have endured such disruptions and seem to be doing well for themselves.

So first thing's first: this was the first Bike and Brew where I've cheated a bit. Up until now, every journey has been a result of my leaving from my house and returning there under my own steam. For this trip, I disassembled the bike, put it in the trunk of our van, and hitched a ride with the wife and kids to Mystic Aquarium, shaving some ten miles off the journey before putting the bike back together.

Mystic Aquarium is one of the main tourist attractions in southeastern Connecticut, known for its beluga whales, penguins, and sea lions. Some friends of ours were having a birthday party for their son at the aquarium, and limiting the number of attending parents to one due to space constraints, so it turned out to be a good opportunity for some solo time. I said my farewells and set off.


...and immediately made a stop next door, because my morning coffee was catching up with me and i needed to use the restroom. Olde Mistick Village is another big tourist trap in the area, mixing a bunch of eclectic shops and restaurants in a faux New England village setting. Sure it's a little kitschy, but it's a nice place with lots of unique stores to check out.


The ride from Mystic to North Stonington was unexpectedly short. As in the ride to Grey Sail and Cottrell, it took me past Clyde's Cider Mill during it's busy season (ie, pretty much any time it's open during the last few months of the year).


The route then continued along Route 201, a straight shot to North Stonington with not much of note along the way. One of the exceptions is the Hoffman Evergreen Preserve, a protected area managed by the Avalonia Land Conservancy. The 200-acre forest features numerous evergreen species planted by Robert D. Hoffman, and Avalonia maintains 4.25 miles of hiking trails through the site.

The southeastern Connecticut shoreline is rather densely populated, so it's always a bit surprising to see how quickly it transitions to a more rural landscape once you get a little farther inland. I grew up across from a farm in western Massachusetts, and coming upon this scene brought me right back to my childhood.



It's also kind of amazing how much of a classic New England town center North Stonington has. Within a very concentrated area you'll find the town hall, the old town hall (now home to the resident state trooper), the Congregational church, the elementary school, the high school right next door, the library (a former school), the historical society (a former library) and a tiny town green/park carved out of some remaining space.

The Shunock River Brewery is named for the scenic river that winds its way through this hamlet. It's located in what used to be another classic village feature, the general store and hardware shop. 

The brewery had its grand opening in November 2019 with pretty much zero fanfare. One day, it was just there. It managed to survive through the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to be something of a low-key attraction that's apparently known more to the locals than anything. They even stopped updating their Facebook in 2023, though their Instagram remains active.

Shunock River Brewery has a cozy, wood-heavy interior, which I forgot to snap a picture of. This image should be up to date. In a bit of deja vu, the bartender during my visit was Nate, the same welcoming, effusive fellow who greeted my wife and I when we visited a few years earlier. 

The brewery offers wood-fired pizzas, but I opted to just get a beer and head to my next destination. Being close to a number of farms, Shunock River Brewery puts an emphasis on sourcing locally for ingredients, as well as brewing batches weekly to ensure freshness. I chose the No. Sto. Pumpkin to enjoy on the back deck overlooking the river. It didn't have much of a pumpkin flavor to it, but I still rated it as a nice easy drinking beer.

The route down to Mystic took me through some surprisingly sedate areas. These are the type of roads where you really only encounter a vehicle if it's someone driving to or from their home, and it was a very lovely and peaceful ride past farms, fields of corn stubble, and old cemeteries. Once the golf club showed up, though, it was obvious we were getting closer to the more populated and monied part of the community.

Somewhat hidden along the way is the Mystic Dark Room. This has been the home to the Mystic Ballet since 2015, and they host occasional performances in an intimate little theater with landscaping that's heavy on statues.

I arrived in Mystic to once again get caught on the wrong side of its famous drawbridge as it lifted up to let a few boats past. Mystic remains a lovely little town to stroll about and discover unique shops and restaurants, but on this occasion I didn't have time for such niceties and simply went straight to my second destination.


Bank & Bridge Brewing is another venue that opened with rather minimal fanfare, although being on the main drag in Mystic (and right next door to the tourist trap that is Mystic Pizza) gives it quite a bit of natural visibility. The building used to be a bank and was serving as the law office of Walt Bansley, who had opened a brewery in 2019, when he decided that a brewpub on the Main Street in Mystic would be a better use for the structure. Bank & Bridge quietly opened in 2021, but has since become a very recognizable part of the community.


Some of the bank infrastructure is still in place, most prominently the safe. Beyond that it's a ragtag mix of neon signs, leather furniture, large-scale paintings, and the brewing tanks on one end of the space. There's an immense amount of room in here, so everything feels kind of dwarfed, but it succeeds as a reasonably casual setting.


Bank & Bridge's menu is full of items designed to help you cheat on your diet, with buttermilk fried chicken as a specialty. It was high time for lunch, so I ordered a sandwich as well as Waves of Ska, a hazy IPA. I also opted to kick back a little more with a Celestial Navigation double IPA. Both were tasty and refreshing after the long ride.

The trip back through Groton was more pleasant than I expected, especially after a heavy lunch. After negotiating the hills leading out of Mystic, I took some back routes through Groton. There was some nice pastoral scenery along the way, including this pumpkin patch at Whittle's Willow Spring Farm.


I decided to make a quick stop at the Copp Family Park in Groton, which turns out to be a surprisingly expansive property. I mostly knew it as a favorite place for dog lovers, due to its substantial dog park, but it also has a lengthy trail network open for hiking and biking. I tried to take a brief jaunt to the remains of a historic homestead, but decided against it after the trail got a bit rough. My bike is still only a commuter one, after all.


Finally, a bittersweet moment: what may be the last Bike & Brew trip across the godawful Gold Star Bridge. 

The Shunock River Brewery and Bank & Bridge Brewing were the last places I needed to visit on the east end of the Thames River, and it's likely to stay that way as new breweries are becoming rarer. Currently the only possibility of one in the region is the Trillium Farm in North Stonington, which is owned by the popular Trillium Brewing Company in Boston. The farm has been growing ingredients for the brewery's beer; it may open as a destination brewery at some point, but right now there's no indication of when that might occur.

So until that happens, I'm taking a break from the bridge and its narrow pathway and hoping it gets its much-needed improvements soon. Time to turn my sights to the west!

Total mileage: 27.3 miles

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