Stay Green Brewing opens in Farmingdale after homebrewing journey

Stay Green Brewing opened its doors at 211A Main Street in Farmingdale on May 30, moving into the former Lithology Brewing tasting room and stepping into a Main Street beer spot with a built-in audience. The Village of Farmingdale had already approved a special-use permit for Stay Green Brewery LLC at its May 4 meeting, so the opening was the kind of clean handoff that turns a closing into a succession story instead of a vacancy.

That matters in Farmingdale because Main Street has supported craft breweries for more than 12 years, which means Stay Green is not trying to build a beer scene from scratch. It is taking over a location that already carries brewery memory, and that raises the same question every successor operation faces in a tight retail corridor: can the new owner make the space feel fresh without losing the regulars who made the old one work?

Jon Green brings a long hobby-to-professional path to the job. He said his interest in beer started with his father’s taste for real ale and CAMRA-style brewing culture, then grew through years in the craft beer business and in mobile canning before he opened his own brewery. That background fits the kind of small-batch, hands-on operation that can survive on a street like Main, where personality and consistency tend to matter as much as production scale.

Stay Green’s lineup shows that Green is not chasing the same taplist every other small brewery throws at customers. The plan calls for 12 taps, about 10 to 11 house beers, and even a house-brewed non-alcoholic iced tea. Green also said he wants to keep an English-style beer on tap and begin with a Dark Mild, a choice that gives the brewery a lower-ABV, session-friendly anchor before the hop-heavy defaults take over. That kind of range can help a taproom stand out in a market that already knows its lagers, IPAs and hazies.

Lithology’s run at 211A Main Street sets the benchmark. The brewery opened its Farmingdale tasting room in November 2016, its founders started brewing together in 2007, and they won the Beer Field’s Homebrew Competition in 2014 before launching the business. Lithology announced its tasting room would close on February 7, and Stay Green’s opening followed less than four months later. That makes the new brewery look less like a gamble on empty retail and more like a deliberate takeover of a proven beer corner, with the same Main Street address now asking a new brewer to earn the traffic the last one held for nearly a decade.