Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Johnny Kraszewski, king for the day.
Ruling over the taps and the raffle tickets: King John “Johnny” Kraszewski.
Kraszewski, the “captain and founder” of Armada Brewing on River Street in Fair Haven, wore an inflatable crown as he worked his company’s eighth anniversary bash Saturday afternoon.
The crown was brought by Deb and Chad, two regulars from Guilford, who also brought a number of small conical party hats for patrons to wear. “We come on Sundays,” Deb and Chad said. “It’s a nice place to relax before the week starts.”
The birthday celebration featured a photo booth, a raffle with several prizes including glass beer mugs and a keg, Suzy Q’s Food Truck, and Southington-based ink man Ed Duong running a flash tattoo table.
The River Street complex is housed in a former Bigelow Boiler Co. building across from where the Quinnipiac meets the Mill. Armada moved to this site in April 2022 after five years of brewing and opened their very own taproom. Two of the stainless steel tanks (industry standard because it “doesn’t rust, easy to clean”) in the brewery portion of the building are from the previous site.
The space is convenient, Kraszewski said: Its location between downtown New Haven and Tweed-New Haven Airport brings in a lot of beer tourism, especially on the weekends.
Ed Duong (left) and his tattooing partner, Carlo.
Duong, who has been a tattoo artist for 11 years, owns The Raven’s Mark in Southington. He’s known Kraszewski for years, has worked other market events at Armada in the past, and was happy to come for this event.
Kate and Mike, a couple who also came from Southington, walked away from Armada’s birthday party with new ink. “We showed up at noon,” they told the Independent. “We wanted to be first in line for tattoos.”
Mike got an infinity symbol over a slice of pizza — because “everybody loves pizza” — and Kate got a cat in a pint of beer — because “I’m a crazy cat lady.” They also entered the raffle hoping to win the keg so they could speed along the process of starting an outdoor bar in their backyard.
Kraszewski has been a brewer for more than a decade. “I started making beer on my kitchen stovetop 15 or 16 years ago,” he said, when he and his partner Alexandra lived in Chicago. They moved to Connecticut — home, for Johnny — to start Armada. At the time, Chicago had hundreds of breweries, and Connecticut only had 14, Johnny told the Independent.
Christina was sitting upstairs in Armada’s “Queen’s Lounge” space with her husband Zachary and baby daughter McKinley, drinking a Mermaid’s Cove. It was their first time coming to Armada. “It’s a pretty cool environment.”
That environment and community is one Kraszewski takes pride in. Getting the taproom space in 2022 was a high point of the last eight years, he said, because it allowed the Armada team “to build the community” of regulars and stoppers-by.
Kate and Mike flashing their new tattoos.