For its fifth anniversary, Brew Gentlemen takes it outside
When Brew Gentlemen opened a brewery and taproom in Braddock in May 2014, many people were frightened to venture into the town’s mostly empty Braddock Avenue business district.
For its fifth anniversary this month, the business announced that it is greatly expanding its production in a warehouse it is renovating out back so that it can distribute more beer, and a lot of it in cans. Friday, it’s inviting the community over for a pig roast in a new adjacent outdoor space, which grand opens on Sunday afternoon.
“We’re even more in love with Braddock,” Matt Katase mused recently as he and co-owner Asa Foster and others worked on finishing touches for the new beer garden, which they have dubbed “BG Open Air.”
Partner and General Manager Alaina Webber said the name also signifies that the space will be open to the community as a needed third space for meetings and other events during the week. The brewery will open it primarily on weekends.
Guests step up onto a former loading dock to order a beer at the bar and can sip it on the rail up there or down on the gravel, where there are carefully arranged open seating as well as more cozy U-shaped seating areas under shade screens. Japanese inspired adornments and light and sound take it up several notches from the typical Pittsburgh beer garden. Still coming are murals like the one on the side of the original building and more art.
Not long ago, this was a junk yard. Now, the barbed wire has been removed from the fencing, which swings open so guests can get to food trucks that will be parked on Woodlawn Avenue, the alley that runs between the warehouse and the brewery. Food trucks also will park in their usual spot out front on Braddock Avenue. Even when the new brewhouse opens later this year, some brewing will continue in the original space, where the “Brew Gentlemen experience,” as she calls it, will remain the same. “We’re just going to do more.”
That experience is carefully thought out and carefully managed. Ms. Webber declined to say the size of the new brewhouse, as that’s some of the news that Brew Gentlemen will release to its fans on its blog and newsletter and social media accounts.
In fact, the brewery has occupied the warehouse for a couple of years now, which some regulars suspected once it was painted in Brew Gentlemen gray.
“People have been so patient, and we have such an amazing base of regulars.”
Mr. Katase acknowledges that the brewery — it has gotten national props for its
soft, elegant and approachable brews made by Zach Gordon — has needed to make more beer for some time now, but he says the company is glad that to be expanding deliberately.
As he noted, he and Mr. Foster — who started brewing together while at Carnegie Mellon University — put in their original business plan that they wanted to put Pittsburgh on the map for craft beer. The expansion will allow them to keep doing that.
“We’re really trying to have deep roots in Pittsburgh.”
In addition to Friday’s community pig roast and Sunday’s grand opening of BG Open Air, Brew Gentlemen are making Saturday “A Beautiful Day in Braddock,” with special beers — including a throwback White Sky chai-spiced wheat beer — and walking tours “to discuss the borough’s history (from the French-Indian War to Andrew Carnegie and beyond), see some of the many pieces of public art, and get an idea of why we’re so proud to call Braddock our home.”
Learn more on Brew Gentlemen’s Facebook events page.
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Also celebrating turning 5 this weekend is Grist House Craft Brewery. Its Millvale headquarters is hosting five out-of-state breweries — RAR Brewing (Cambridge, Md.), Barreled Souls Brewing (Saco, Mass.), Alarmist Brewing (Chicago), New Image Brewing (Arvada, Colo.) and Burley Oak Brewing (Berlin, Md.) — and offering a 10-ounce pour from each for $50. And you get a pour from Grist House, too, which will start the party on Saturday with celebratory can and bottle releases. The details lso are on the Facebook event page.