BALLSTON SPA — Just weeks away from its grand opening, Speckled Pig Brewing Company will offer patrons a taproom with in-house brewed beers, wood-fired pizza and “good vibes.”
The business will be holding a soft opening for friends and family this week and will be holding its grand opening in a few weeks, the date will be announced soon said partner and assistant brewer Larry Heid. Speckled Pig Brewing’s Facebook page promises its grand opening is going to be “PIG.”
“Our partners and I had just been home brewing for a long time and just thought we’d take the next step into it,” Heid said.
The building, located at 11-13 Washington St., was formerly a dress factory and had been vacant for about 30 years.
The property was purchased by Heid’s partners Randy Elliott, his wife, Kelly Delaney-Elliott, and their son R.J. Elliott in May 2020 for $180,000. The Ballston Spa family had a brewing and wood-fired pizza business in mind.
“It’s completely renovated,” Heid said. “They’ve done an amazing job with the space. It used to be storage, like a warehouse space.”
The renovations started in December, Heid said.
“It took us twice as long as we had anticipated,” Heid said. “Probably twice as much money as we thought too. There’s a lot of waiting. The amount of bureaucracy, you have to deal with state permits, federal permits, county permits and village permits. There’s a lot of levels of oversight.
The beers sold at Speckled Pig Brewing will all be brewed in-house, Heid said. In addition to their craft beers, they also will serve wood-fired pizza.
“Our menu will have wood-fired pizza and charcuterie boards, we’ll have Bavarian pretzels with some beer cheese,” Heid said. “We’re keeping it pretty simple.”
The food and the wood-fired pizza oven will help Specked Pig stand out, Heid believes. He said that in a lot of these types of establishments, people will come in and grab a couple of pints and then leave to go out to dinner elsewhere.
“We’re hoping that because the taproom is set up in the comfortable way that it is, that people will stick around longer,” Heid said. “They’ll have a pizza here, they’ll make a night of it.”
Heid expects to also have live music at the business on weekends, which he believes will help bring people in.
The space seats 70, Heid said. He hopes to eventually have an outdoor patio area as well.
The name Speckled Pig is an homage to farmers, Heid said.
“We’re a New York state farm brewer,” Heid said. “Some of the farms we would go to, we took note at this one farm, these pigs were all speckled. Like ‘Oh that’s kind of a cool name’. That’s where the name came from.”
Heid, who is from Albany, said he loves Saratoga County and wanted to be in this area because it is up and coming. “Breweries are opening up all over the place, but Ballston Spa is a really underserved market for it,” he said.
“There’s so many types of people who come to these types of breweries, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like craft beer,” Heid said.
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