Thimble Island Old Saybrook Brewpub (Closed)

A Thimble of Time
Thimble Island Brewpub, Old Saybrook

This Thimble Island location closed in January 2025. I never visited.

It’s tough out there, folks. While the flagship Thimble Island Brewery is still open in an office park in Branford, this attempt at a second location in Old Saybrook lasted only nine months.

In an article celebrating its grand opening, president and CEO of Thimble Island Brewing Company Justin Gargano said he had been looking for a second location for “well over a year.” That puts things into perspective, eh? And the “perfect spot” (his words) was his brother’s closed Gargano Pasta & Italian Market in Old Saybrook.

“I just couldn’t let that beautiful place go to waste and I felt the need to jump on it,” he said.

Well. Shoot.

I never visited and never really made it a priority because as far as I know, they never brewed beer at this location. Sure, you can see tanks in the pictures I took from their Facebook page, but you can’t see a brewing license on the state’s registry. I won’t pretend that the state is always up to date online with that stuff, so I’m not really sure. (And, perhaps symptomatic of the entire industry and specifically Thimble Island, the people I asked if they knew if they brewed had no idea because they’d also never been there.)

Thimble Island is a good brewery. I’ve enjoyed many of their offerings over the years. And Old Saybrook is a beautiful town with a decent little business district. But I’m sure it’s expensive to run a business like this there and, well, perhaps a brewpub wasn’t what the locals were looking for. Pre-opening buzz was loud though, with the town’s First Selectman saying, “Since I’ve been in office, for 12 years, people have repeatedly asked me if, somehow, we could get a brewpub in town. I think it’s going to be very active. I think it’s going to be very successful, I just think it’ going to be a huge hit.”

Well. Shoot.

They had a kitchen and the menu looked good. I did find this about brewing onsite:

the Old Saybrook beers and ales made onsite will be “research and development, test batches.”

“This would just be any trials or things that we’re looking to bring to the marketplace or based upon what the market’s currently clamoring for, we’ll be producing out of there,” Gargano said.

If that happened, darn, this would be the first actively brewing brewery/brewpub in Connecticut that I didn’t have a beer from since I started this website in 2006. I’m prepared to mentally deal with that. It’s hardly the failure that this brewpub was. Perspective is everything.

This place was not small. It was 4,000 square feet of restaurant and bar, with 3,000 square feet below for the kitchen and prep. They put in a 34-foot mahogany bar. Improved the outdoor patio.

The Garganos are an institution in the area. The Italian restaurant, mom Cheri owns a Cheri’s Bakery in Branford, the Branford Brewery… I wish them future success. I’m sorry I never visited. The reason given for the closure on Thimble’s social media was, “We absolutely love the Old Saybrook community, but the building we are in has presented challenges that have impacted on our service quality.”

Well. Shoot.

Many of the quotes above were taken from CT Insider articles that are paywalled and disappear frequently, so I didn’t bother linking.