Hot House Brewing at Barone Gardens

Emma Vallelunga

Inside Hot House Brewing at Barone Gardens, you can drink a cold beer or savor a freshly pressed panini surrounded by hundreds of flowers in bloom this summer. While the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, the garden center and farm brewery in Cicero is one of many local businesses in Central New York ready to welcome back customers as safely as possible for a hopeful return to normalcy.

John Barone opened Barone Gardens in 1989 selling retail, wholesale and young plants out of his greenhouses. It wasn’t until 2019 that Barone and partners Paul Richer and Tim Parkhurst teamed up to launch Hot House Brewing. Barone said the idea was to grow their own traditional wet hops inside his greenhouse, brew them at the garden center and combine the two businesses to create Hot House Brewing at Barone Gardens.

Using LED lighting, Barone is able to harvest his hops multiple times a year, as opposed to the crop’s traditional annual harvest in late August.

“I was always looking at alternatives and different things to grow, and I had an interest in it, so we decided to grow hops,” Barone said. “Then I had a couple of friends who were interested in brewing, and then it all took off from there.”

Today, the brewery sells many different kinds of beer from their own harvests, including pale ales, New England IPAs, regular IPAs, a porter, a spiced harvest ale, a blond ale and an Irish red ale, that customers can buy by the can or taste in a glass in their tasting room.

Even the names of some beers carry Cicero or Syracuse themes, like the Golden Eagle Pale Ale, named after the old Cicero mascot where the three partners graduated high school, and the Plank Road Porter, named after the first 16.5-mile plank road in the U.S. between Syracuse and Central Square that’s now Route 11.

Aside from the tap room, the tasting room of Hot House Brewing also features a small retail shop for other goods. After the business acquired its farm brewery license, Barone’s wife, Merry Beth Barone, opened the space after the center was renovated for brewing production.

“When we reopened as a brewery, I opened the retail [space] at the same time,” Merry Beth Barone said. “With a farm brewery license, you can only sell alcohol that’s made in New York State. So I took that same concept and sourced out everything else locally.”

Every product in the retail shop is local or regional from across Central New York; there are hard ciders from 1911 in Lafayette, wines from Fox Run Vineyards in Penn Yan and Pleasant Valley Wine Company in the Finger Lakes, cheese from 1000 Islands River Rat Cheese in Clayton and home decor artwork from Lighthouse Sea Glass in Ithaca and Wildwoods Wood Working in Edmeston.

But something else Merry Beth Barone added to the brewery that August only adds to the experience of it all. The Hot House Brewing Bistro serves paninis, wraps, salads and shareable appetizers to pair and enjoy with the brewery’s craft beers.

“[The bistro] wasn’t even in our plan,” Merry Beth Barone said. “We figured having different snack foods from other local suppliers would be sufficient. But we realized quickly that people would come in, have a couple beers, do a tasting and then they would leave and go to dinner.”

So, to keep customers at the brewery longer, Merry Beth Barone got her food service license through the health department to operate the kitchen and has enjoyed the experience ever since.

“It’s a passion of mine to cook,” she said. “I’ve actually never worked in a restaurant before doing this, but I’ve had some very good friends who own restaurants, and my food supplier has been very supportive, so it’s a combination of those things that let me do what I do.”

Both traditional savory and seasonal summer flavors are everywhere on the menu. When the bistro closed temporarily during the

Photo by David Tyler

pandemic, Merry Beth Barone decided to expand the menu for the spring and summer months when they reopened. The Springberry Salad is made with avocado, candied nuts, cucumbers, chicken, goat cheese and strawberries with a homemade strawberry vinaigrette.

“I wanted to have some healthier options and things that were cold that people could enjoy for the summer, so I added some salads and wraps and shareables to it, and it’s been extremely well received,” she said.

Last summer, the garden center and brewery maintained New York State mask mandates, social distancing and food purchases with alcohol guidelines, as well as offering to-go orders for the bistro with curbside pickup. This summer, as new guidance comes from the CDC and NYS, Merry Beth Barone said they’ll continue to offer curbside pickup and other distancing protocols but is relaxing its policy on masks.

“Anyone that has been vaccinated is welcome to come in without wearing a mask, but we are requiring that people who have not been vaccinated wear a mask,” she said. “We’re very slowly starting to bring things back as we used to do.”

Also due to the pandemic, John Barone said the brewery hasn’t grown any hops the past two seasons and outsourced its ingredients from other growers but is hoping to plant his own soon. Plans to continue more canning and labeling their beer in-house are already underway, and Richer, the brewmaster of the trio, is working on launching a peach vanilla wheat beer this summer.

Merry Beth Barone said she’s always looking for new and different products to feature in the retail shop. For the bistro, she hopes to continue expanding the menu. Future activities coming back this summer will include trivia, outdoor games like cornhole and giant Jenga and live music. As summer comes around the corner in Syracuse and COVID-19 restrictions are slowly being lifted in some areas, many local businesses are hoping customers feel comfortable enough to come back and enjoy their services again. SWM

To learn more about Hot House Brewing, visit their website at hothousebrewing.com or follow them on Facebook at Hot House Brewing at Barone Gardens.