Springs Brewery, the local beer beloved for its crisp pilsners and groovy artist designed cans, will open a brick and mortar tap room and tasting room next year. Springs native Lindsay Reichart and her partner Gunner Burke have taken over Hampton Auto Collision (847 Springs Fireplace Road) the 35-year-old auto body repair shop owned by Reichart’s parents Randy and Demi, keeping the space all in the family.
Burke and Reichart, who are architects and designers by day, plan to design and renovate the space themselves, and hope to open by summer 2027, with a production space to refine recipes and craft new ones, a tasting room and bar and a shop where cans and growlers will be available to go.
It’s a journey a decade in the making; the pair started out back in 2016 as home fermenters who made sauerkraut and kombucha in their Brooklyn apartment. A love of craft beer led them to add beer to the mix. When they moved back home to Springs during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they began brewing out of Reichart’s parents’ garage, upgrading their set up, honing and refining their process and developing a philosophy to their style of brewing.
With positive feedback from friends, they started building their brand, getting their commercial brewing license and producing at Übergeek in Riverhead by 2021. From there, they started wholesaling and began popping up at the old Springs General Store and at the Springs Farmers Market where they have been building a fan base since 2022.
“We both come from art and architecture backgrounds and take that approach to our beer,” says Burke. “We want to put these great ingredients on display in a way that shows their character. We place a lot of emphasis on sourcing and in using interesting unique high-quality ingredients.”
Since launching their craft beer brand in 2022 with flagship beers like their New England-style IP lazy Lightning, Lindsay Reichart and GunnEr Burke have been looking for a home to showcase their beer, and now they’ve found it in the form of Reichart’s dad’s former auto body shop. (Photos courtesy of Springs Brewery)
For Reichart and Burke, that means using both classic recipes and ingredients, like English malt as the backbone of their flagship New England-style Hazy IPA Lazy Lightning, and German and Czech barley and hops for their other core beer, a pilsner called Radio Radio.
But they’re also leaning into local ingredients as well. For their San Souci, part of a rotating collection of light sour-style beers, they source closer to home, using Amagansett grown cape gooseberries on a base of Berliner Weisse that features Amber Waves Farm wheat. The latter ingredient is also used for The Meat of the Tomato, their American Pale Ale. Springs Apiary honey is infused into their Promised Land IPA, freshly harvested Cascade hops sourced from Condzella’s farm in Wading River are in their Subtle Sounds IPA, and for Bent by Nature, a German-style Helles, they brew with Foster Farms barley from Sagaponack.
With distribution locally at spots like Meeting House, Rowdy Hall, Rosie’s and Springs Tavern, and in the city at Eel Bar, Roberta’s, Nudie Branch and the newly opened Zig Zag Oyster Bar, they were keen to find a space to one day open a brewery of their own.
When Reichart’s father decided to retire from his auto-body shop, right across the street from where she grew up, it made perfect sense to keep the building as a family business. “Keeping this building in her family is super important to us,” says Burke.
Opening in Springs —the scrappy tomboy little sister to the glossy glamour of the Hamptons — was a requirement; Reichart is among the younger generation of Bonackers, a group of families that were some of the earliest settlers of East Hampton. Largely made up of baymen, fisherman and clammers, only a handful of Bonackers still remain today. Reichart is among an even smaller subsection who left Springs but felt the pull to return and create something that would make her community come together. “We are super excited to have a place to invite people in,” says Burke.
Given their deep connection to the community, the brewery is about more than just craft suds. For instance, when the river otters returned to Springs after being driven away decades ago by water quality and over-trapping, they designed (adorable) otter bumper stickers with a holographic lightning bolt detail to celebrate.
“Being in Springs, we want our brand to reflect and embody this community that is so special to us,” says Burke. “We want the tasting room to be a place where people can come and be proud of the product that’s made in this neighborhood where they are from. We also want to keep Springs this low-key place that reflects our approach to beer and hospitality. That feeling is part of the brand.”
