Exactly one month after closing due to flooding damage, Apponaug Brewing Company re-opened at 4 p.m. last Friday night.

Despite the cause for celebration- and patrons arriving  almost an hour before doors opened, general manager Jamie Walsh said that it reminded her of a regular business day before the flood.

That’s how they prefer it.

“I’m very encouraged that it sort of feels like business as usual, like we didn’t skip a beat,” Walsh said.

The brewery, located at the old Pontiac Mills, was perhaps one of the biggest victims of the Dec. 19 Pawtuxet River flood. The second-highest flood of that river in recorded history left two feet of water in every room of the business, according to co-owner Tamara McKenney, and submerged its parking lot.

After only half an hour back in business, the showroom was almost completely full, something that Walsh attributed to the community that the company has cultivated.

“People reached out to our social media directly, with some of our staff directly, with our owner, saying what can I do? I’ll pick up a mop,” Walsh said.

The company is also commemorating the flooding with a new t-shirt and a new beer.

Walsh said that the business has updated its disaster preparedness, in order to better protect equipment and minimize damage from the “problem areas” that they identified after the December flooding.

They’ve already gotten the opportunity to put their new flood response to the test, with the Pawtuxet River flooding again on Jan. 10. The company’s response to that led to a much shorter recovery time than they had to take from December’s flooding.

“We were much more prepared,” Walsh said. “Anything and everything that could potentially be affected that we could control we put up and out of the way. There was far less water that came in, so it was much more manageable in that aspect. The only things that we had to replace was the baseboards and the sheetrock- all stuff that we had literally just finished putting up that we had to replace again.”

There’s still a bit of flooding damage to be repaired. The bar, according to Walsh, is still unfinished, and the business is still waiting on some materials to finish a hallway. Walsh said that the company wanted to get back in business as soon as possible, though, and with the remaining damage to the inside of the building being cosmetic, determined they were ready to reopen by Friday night.

The company lost all of its equipment on its patio bar, according to Walsh, though they’re hoping to have that reopened as well by this weekend.

Walsh said that they were looking at improving some aspects of the interior of the business as well, using the flood as an opportunity to rebuild more.

“We’re changing our look to a corrugated metal with a nice break around it,” Walsh said. “We got all of our tables refinished while we were out. Kingston Craft came in and redid them all, so they’re looking like they did on day one again.”

The river isn’t going away. A view out the window from the showroom shows just how close the rushing water is to the building at all times, and Walsh acknowledged that their new flood response plan will likely have to be put into action again at some point.

After the trials and tribulations of the past month, though, Walsh said that Apponaug Brewing Company is excited and ready to welcome faces old and new for a brew.

“We do it to be around people and we get that energy to just have that engagement, that’s always been Apponaug’s philosophy,” Walsh said. “[The energy] is exciting to see.”