For four years, Somerset Brewing Company has poured its beer from a small industrial unit tucked off Cherry Valley Avenue in West Hempstead, the kind of space you only find because someone told you it was there. That era is about to end. The brewery is finishing work on a building more than twice the size just across the parking lot, this one fronting the avenue itself, with a full restaurant, an outdoor patio and a brewhouse that can make far more beer than the little system that started it all.

The brewery the Doc built

Somerset opened its taproom at 94 Cherry Valley Ave. in the summer of 2022, and its origin story is still one of the best on the Nassau beer map. Founder Manny Fajardo is a physician, a Garden City native who kept practicing medicine while he taught himself to brew, and the taproom has never let anyone forget it. The tap list reads like a wink at his day job: an IPA called Surgical Precision, a fall lager called Doktoberfest, and a rotating cast of beers the regulars simply credit to the Doc.

The original space was built around a four-barrel brewhouse with a modest taproom alongside it, open Thursday through Sunday, dogs and kids welcome, with rotating food trucks handling dinner. It earned a loyal neighborhood following, sponsored local leagues, and filled weekends with run clubs, trivia nights, open mics and live music.

What the new building changes

The new home is a roughly 5,000 square foot building that faces Cherry Valley Avenue directly, a few steps from the unit Somerset has been brewing in since 2022. Fajardo signed the lease in early 2025, and in June of that year, the day after the brewery's third anniversary, he announced that the town had cleared the construction to start. Since then the build-out has run over a year, with the owner handling a good share of the work with his own hands.

The numbers the brewery has shared tell the story of the upgrade. The brewhouse grows from four barrels to ten. Sixteen serving tanks will hold many times the beer the current taproom can pour, and the added capacity is expected to put more Somerset cans in reach for anyone who wants to take the beer home. The bar will seat around 35 people, and a patio of roughly 3,000 square feet nearly matches the footprint of the entire original operation.

The biggest change for most visitors will be the kitchen. The current taproom relies on food trucks; the new one is designed as a full restaurant, which moves Somerset from a place you stop for a pint into a place you can settle in for the evening.

The old room is still pouring

None of this has paused the current taproom. Somerset's October calendar is full, with live music booked on weekends through the end of the month, trivia and run club nights in between, and the food trucks still rolling up. The brewery has been aiming to open the new building in October, and until the doors move, everything happens where it always has, at the unit marked 94C.

What it means for the neighborhood

West Hempstead is not a place anyone describes as overserved with nightlife, and Somerset has quietly become one of its gathering spots anyway, from a location that was never designed for foot traffic. Moving the whole operation to a building that faces the avenue, with a patio, a kitchen and room for twice the crowd, turns a hidden local secret into a visible anchor on Cherry Valley Avenue.

For readers nearby, the practical version is this: the brewery you had to know about is becoming one you can simply walk into, with dinner on the menu and a lot more beer behind the bar. Keep an eye on Somerset's own channels for the opening date, and if you want to say goodbye to the original room, October's music calendar gives you several chances to do it with a pint in hand.