Two Frays Brewing opens to guests, including furry ones, in Garfield
A recently published list of “Pittsburgh breweries with dog-friendly outdoor spaces” didn’t include Two Frays Brewery. But that’s only because the Garfield brewery wasn’t yet open to drink- in customers, but rather, due to COVID-19 considerations, had just started out selling four-packs of cans to go. When it opens its doors Thursday, guests with two as well as four legs are welcome on a lovely gravel and grass outdoor space besides the 120-year-old storefront, where humans may now sit and sip a draft.
French Bulldogs Zeus and Iris have been part of the social-media-shared buildout done over the past year and a half-plus by owners Jen and Mike Onofray. Moreover, the couple’s love of walking the dogs in places where they can all stop for a beer with their neighbors is part of what drove them to open just the kind of brewery they’d want to frequent.
“It’s not just about the beer here,” says Mr. Onofray, explaining how the care they’ve taken to weave the brewery in to the rapidly transforming Penn Avenue business district’s history and arts aesthetic and people.
Of course they kept the vintage “Ask for Star Soap” ad painted on the side of the building, the previous lives of which have been everything from a bakery to a veterans club to Penn Variety to a hair salon. Having the outdoor lot is what sealed the deal and made this the setting for the next chapter in the couple’s story.
Mr. Onofray is a North Huntingdon native who, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, when to Michigan to work for General Motors as a product engineer. Jennifer is a Northeast Philly gal and Lehigh University grad who was working in R & D for Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati when a mutual friend invited her up to a Detroit car show in 2001 and she met
Mike — naturally, over a beer. They got married, she moved there to also work in the auto industry, and at some point, he says, in what could be a T-shirt slogan, “My wife bought me a homebrew kit.”
He and a work colleague brewed as they worked different assignments, including one in Korea, and eventually, Mr. Onofray left that corporate world, took a brewing certificate course and started helping out at local breweries. When Ms. Onofray’s job took them to Nashville, Tenn., he worked his way into a hands-on-everything head brewer’s job at Little Harpeth Brewing Co. They wanted to open their own brewery, but where? Friends here talked them into Pittsburgh, but it wasn’t a hard sell because the couple loved that it’s a real city with small neighborhood feels.
And so here they are, about a year later than they’d planned. “It’s a much more subtle opening,” says Ms. Onofray, but she says they used the extra time to get to know the community and get things right. The mechanical engineer wife of the friend who introduced the couple lead the uncommonly polished interior design of the first floor. Yes, there’s exposed brick, but, “We wanted it to look different,” he says. “It was very purposeful to go away from pallet walls and reclaimed wood” and mix some new tile and light fixtures with the building’s old bones.
They put in a new first floor floor, reinforced with steel and concrete so that they can triple their current capacity of their 7-barrel, four-fermenter brewhouse that’s open to the taproom. There he plans to keep brewing all kinds of brews, plus house soda and seltzers. They’ll have local Arsenal cider on tap, too, and eventually will add canned cocktails and wines.
Ms. Onofray, who will be returning to her job of running manufacturing businesses, says, “One of our mottos is, ‘Something for everyone.’” The taproom’s capacity is about 45 people, and about that many can fit outdoors. Their next project will be to do more with the onetime residences of the now gutted second and third floors, which could become an apartment or, true to their mission, community gathering space.
Also true to their mission, they’re not going to serve their own food, but rather, invite customers to bring in food from the many restaurants in the neighborhood, with whom they plan to work on pairings and other promotions.
From before the start, the couple — who live within dog- walking distance in Bloomfield — aimed for this to be what he describes as a “face-to-face draft business. We hope it will be.”
Due to COVID, the couple started selling cans of their first five beers to go only on May 28. They were very pleased at how popular they proved to be — so much so that they had low supplies of 2FB American pale ale, Jen’s Porter and Quiet Loud new West Coast imperial pale ale cans. For the opening, they’ll be pouring drafts of those and several other brews, from Together Better kolsch to Contrasting Colors hazy IPA to a summery passion fruit wheat ale with the nostalgic name of Freeze Tag. Some cans are here to stay.
Opening weekend hours are to be 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday; noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.
Two Frays Brewery is located at 5113 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15224; the website is www.twofraysbrewery.com.