Drive down Main Street in Port Monmouth this month and you will notice the building at 909 is dark more often than not. No cars lined up at the dock. No German oompah band setting up for a weekend of Oktoberfest tastings. Three years ago this address was supposed to be the thing that put Belford on the map. Today it is closed.
That brewery was Ross Brewing Company, and its story is a useful lens for understanding what actually holds up in this section of Middletown Township, versus what only looked like it would.
The pitch that filled the parking lot
When Ross Brewing opened on April 14, 2023, it opened with a big claim: New Jersey's first waterfront brewery, a place where you could pull your boat right up to the dock and drink a beer with the New York City skyline in view across Raritan Bay. Owner John Ross Cocozza had bought the building from Shoal Harbor Lobster Co. in 2020 and spent two years gutting it, pulling out three lobster pools and donating them to the seafood co-op next door. The opening day lines started at 9 a.m., hours before the noon start, with cars backed up past the nearby Dunes condos. One Port Monmouth resident told a local reporter it was simply nice to have a new place close enough to walk to.
The bet was on novelty. Two-story tasting room, outdoor beer garden, a working dock where you could fish and crab while you drank, a footprint built explicitly for engagement parties and sunset photos. It worked, for a while. Ross Brewing hosted a one-year anniversary cooking contest in 2024 and ran an annual Rosstoberfest alongside its neighbor down the road. Then, sometime before this summer, it closed. Yelp's current listing marks it closed outright, and beer-tracking chatter on Untappd from earlier this year includes a blunt two-word eulogy from a regular: "R.I.P. Ross."
The brewery that never made the pitch
Nearby on Main Street, in a stretch known locally as Campbell's Junction, Belford Brewing Company is still open, still pouring, and still running the same Thursday through Sunday hours it has kept for years. It was incorporated in 2013 by brothers Michael and Kevin Enny, who grew up in Belford, as a five-barrel nanobrewery with no waterfront, no skyline view, and no boat access. It sits across from a Dunkin.
There was never a marketing angle built around exclusivity or spectacle. The beer names lean into neighborhood trivia instead. One of its beers, the Spy House Cranberry Wit, borrows its name from a pre-Revolutionary War house nearby said to have been a lookout point on the Bayshore. Reviewers who have been coming for a decade describe it as the kind of place where the excitement of walking in still feels fresh, not because anything changed, but because nothing did.
Here is the comparison that matters if you are trying to read Belford's actual pulse rather than its press coverage:
| Ross Brewing | Belford Brewing | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | April 2023 | 2013 |
| Pitch | NJ's first waterfront brewery, boat dock access, NYC skyline views | Small-batch neighborhood brewhouse, no waterfront |
| Footprint | Two-story tasting room on a working dock | Five-barrel brewhouse on Main Street |
| Status as of 2026 | Closed | Open, Thursday through Sunday |
The brewery that sold an experience lasted roughly three years. The brewery that sold a habit is still pouring pints on a Thursday night.
Down the road, the strip mall filled in for good
While Belford's brewery math simplified, Route 35 quietly finished a different kind of buildout. The retail row next to the Middletown ShopRite in the Kings Commons plaza, once envisioned by the township as a high-end food court, is now fully occupied. Nicholas Creamery, an ice cream parlor with locations already in Fair Haven, Atlantic Highlands, Tinton Falls and Long Branch, opened its fifth shop there. Booskerdoo Coffee & Baking Co., which roasts its beans and bakes its pastries on site, opened its sixth Monmouth County location next door, its first in Middletown.
The last piece landed on January 1, 2025, when Rosie's Pizza opened its second storefront in that same row, a satellite of the Point Pleasant Beach original that built a cult following for its square Sicilian pie, including an 8.5 out of 10 rating from Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Owner Mike Mercuro told the Two River Times the decision to land in Kings Commons, tucked between Booskerdoo and Nicholas Creamery and across the parking lot from ShopRite, was a "no-brainer," pointing to years of Middletown customers who had already been driving south to Point Pleasant just to bring pies home. The Middletown location is roughly 50 percent larger than the original, with two three-deck ovens built specifically to keep up with local demand.
None of these three businesses opened with a headline claim about being the first anything in the state. They opened next to a grocery store parking lot. And unlike the brewery down in Belford, all three are still there.
The one date that hasn't moved
If there is a single fixed point on Middletown's fall calendar, it is Middletown Day, and this year it lands on Sunday, October 4, 2026, at Croydon Hall, with a rain date set for October 18. The format has stayed consistent for years: a festival from 1 to 5 p.m. featuring a Business and Community Showcase, a food court, first responder touch-a-truck demonstrations, live music and children's activities, followed by a set from The Cliffs from 5 to 6:30 p.m., and fireworks at 6:30. Organizers are anticipating more than 12,000 attendees, which makes it the single largest recurring gathering the township hosts.
Nothing about Middletown Day is new or novel. It doesn't have a boat dock or a skyline view. It happens at the same campus every year, run largely by volunteers, and it is exactly the kind of event that doesn't need a pitch because everyone already knows what it is.
What actually lasted
Put these three threads next to each other and a pattern shows up. The business that promised the most spectacular version of itself, the one with the skyline view and the boat access, is the one that closed after roughly three years. The brewery with no pitch beyond good beer and more than a decade of Thursday nights is still open. The food court that filled in one modest tenant at a time next to a grocery store now has a pizza shop good enough that people used to drive south to Point Pleasant just to bring the pies home. And the one event on the calendar that never tried to reinvent itself is still the biggest single day of the year in town.
If you live in Middletown, that's probably not a surprise so much as a confirmation of something you already suspected: the places and events that stick around here tend to be the ones that never oversold themselves in the first place. Worth keeping in mind next time a flashy new spot opens with a big claim and a long opening-day line. Ask what it looks like in year three.
If you're weighing a move within Middletown Township, or trying to figure out which section of town actually fits how you live day to day, Samantha Vallone Verway knows these blocks well enough to tell you the difference between the pitch and the habit. Let's Get You Home.
