Newport Craft Brewing and Distilling

From the classic beginning of four college friends, an idea and garage space in 1999, to a 10,000 square foot manufacturing facility, 20 employees, multi-state distribution and a portfolio of 16 craft beers and 9 distilled spirits, Newport Craft Brewing & Distilling is amongst today’s leaders in the New England brewing and distilling industry.

The first licensed distillery in Rhode Island in over 135 years, Newport Craft resurrected the history of Newport distilling, once the rum capital of the world, with its production of Thomas Tew Rum®.  Using the same distilling methods, equipment and ingredients of its distilling forefathers, the Thomas Tew Rum line can be found on the top shelf of over 500 restaurant and bars, Walt Disney World’s EPCOT and as the official rum of the New York Mets.  In 2019, USA Today ranked Thomas Tew Rum amongst the top ten craft rums in America.

In November, 2017 a group of local Rhode Island investors acquired a controlling interest (now 100%) in the Company, and has, to date, combined and rebranded the brewing and distilling divisions, reorganized the product lines, introduced new products, updated manufacturing equipment and back office technology, and made strategic acquisitions of Braven Brewing Company to open the Company to the New York metropolitan market.  These efforts spearheaded by a dynamic management team, have, in the past 30 months, doubled the amount of beer produced, added several new spirits to the product line, more than tripled the work force, increased distribution to five states (CT, MA, NY, PA and RI), and grown the social media platform to over 45,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook and impressions on the geosocial network beer application Untappd to over 130,000.  Also, the Company continued to add to its inventory of distilled rum and whisky which now stands at 860 barrels, representing 36,000+ cases.