Draft Barn To Open Location In Heart Of Sheepshead

It has been almost a year since we announced that an unnamed “beer garden” would be opening up in the basement of the commercial building at 30 Dooley Street, but we’ve just discovered that it will be the latest outpost of the locally-owned Draft Barn.

Owner George Mitelman was in the shop when we stopped by on Friday, overseeing some general work being done before the opening, which he said would be in about three weeks. Why has it taken a year? Mitelman said it was the usual permit shenanigans, but things are finally settled.

By our count, this is the fourth location of Draft Barn. Their first location is at 317 Avenue X, sporting an enormous list of foreign beers. They also opened in Gowanus-Park Slope (530 3rd Avenue), where the beer menu treats yuppies to a host of American micro-brews (as well as imports). They had a location on the Riegelmann Boardwalk in Brighton Beach, too.

And now they’ll be in Sheepshead Bay, just off of Emmons Avenue, and, though still under construction, the Old World feel (similar to its other locations) is amplified in the building’s basement. Mitelman added that they’ll be tweaking the menu as they go along, finding the balance between micro-breweries and imports that suits Sheepshead Bay residents best. Regardless of what they go with, the emphasis here is choice: the establishment will sport 14 taps and about 300 varieties of bottled beer.