By Alex Biese
RED BANK – A downtown Red Bank fixture has joined the wave of craft beer operations closing throughout New Jersey, as Red Tank Brewing poured its final pint and served its last tasting flight at 77 Monmouth St., owners confirmed to the Two River Times in an interview.
“We want to express our gratitude to each and every one of you for your unwavering support throughout the years. It has been an incredible journey, and we are humbled by the love and loyalty you have shown,” read a statement posted to the Red Tank Brewing Instagram page March 6.
Craft beer fans will still have plenty of reasons to frequent the address, as Five Dimes Brewery of Westwood, Bergen County, will be taking over operations. Red Tank Brewing owner John Arcara explained that selling to Five Dimes wasn’t a difficult choice.
“The Alementary, Flying Fish, Forgotten Boardwalk, everybody is dying,” said Arcara, who opened Red Tank Brewing with his wife Lovina in 2018. “Flying Fish is the biggest in the state, how could they go away? But there they are – gone. So we definitely feel like we made the right move selling to Five Dimes because the trend right now is local breweries are buying smaller local breweries to get a foothold in the county.”
Somerdale-based Flying Fish Brewing, viewed by many as a craft beer success story since its 1995 launch, filed for bankruptcy late last year. The Alementary in Hackensack and Forgot- ten Boardwalk Brewing in Cherry Hill each announced their impending closure in January.
Arcara, who also operates a wedding photography business, said he and his wife opened Red Tank with the plan of selling the brewery in 10 to 15 years.
“Maybe a big brewery would buy us, like Budweiser,” Arcara said of the Red Bank couple’s original business plan. “That was the dream before 2020, (that) Miller Lite, Coors Lite would buy us. Because
a lot of those big brewhouses were buying small breweries up. So, that was the dream that every brewery wants – to be bought out by one of those big guys. But those guys stopped buying small breweries,” he said.
Instead of a big brewery, a smaller one came calling, which Arcara said is a trend.
“Five Dimes called us because a lot of small breweries are buying even smaller breweries,” he said.
“They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse and we took it.”
While legislative changes at the state level famously sparked a boom in New Jersey’s craft beer industry in 2011, Arcara said he found the business “taking a dive during COVID” and noted changing trends in the industry with last year’s shuttering of Jughandle Brewing Co. in Tinton Falls – one of the breweries that inspired the Arcaras to enter the beer world themselves.
Red Tank Brewing’s final day of operations was Sunday, March 4, Arcara said. And while it is unknown how long it will be until the space re-opens as Five Dimes’ Monmouth County outpost, Arcara said the new owners are working to honor pre-existing commitments for live music and private events.
The new ownership, Arcara said, also plans to retain some of Red Tank’s flagship beers, such as the Molly Pitcher American Amber Lager and Cisco’s Disco Premium Lager.
“The beers that were doing really well for Red Tank are going to stay alive,” he said.
The article originally appeared in the March 21 –March 27, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
