Fidens Brewing Co

The idea was simple from the start. Let’s open a small brewery and try to do it ourselves in Albany, NY. We kicked around ideas of what we would need to do while on road trips to our favorite breweries near and far. The truth is, we didn’t have any experience outside of one of us cleaning kegs and packaging beer in college. It was just a dream to be able to call it our jobs and to make it on our own.
Steve started to get into hop-forward craft beers around 2014, after sampling some Vermont offerings. Ultimately, we gathered to sample the growlers and cans from recent beer trips.
We grew up outside of Plattsburgh and relocated to the Capital Region. Tim’s and Steve’s families became fast friends, but more importantly, now they could line up beer runs and share with friends at home. Steve quickly started finding more great spots which motivated him to begin homebrewing in his garage with the blessing of his wife Raquel, and he never stopped. The whole time, Tim, Steve, and friends continued to travel for beer to enjoy during garage brew days. Steve was quickly at one with his inner brewer. He sought to convince Tim and his wife Brigit to start a low-budget little brewery. We just wanted to get it off the ground. We quickly scheduled a brew day and made sure Tim was available to go over the business plan focused on controlling costs. We did everything we could to stay within our budget. A lot was learned along the way and the budget was quickly laughable.
Shortly after we agreed to see if we could pull this feat off, we needed a name for the brewery. Steve’s wife, Raquel, had an aha moment during a brainstorming session and we had our brewery name. We wanted something that would represent our challenge of creating a brewery on our own without investors or experience. Fidens is a Latin word that translates to courageousness, without fear, confidence. Its meaning is very connected with how we run our brewery.
We’ve slowly grown since opening our doors towards the end of 2019. We are excited to see how this story grows.