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New Penn Brewery Owners Remodeling, Plan New Beers |
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Wednesday, 25 November 2009 09:47 |
It's as if Prohibition has ended all over again in Pittsburgh. Penn Brewery is reopening on the North Side this week exactly one year after the previous owners announced they would no longer brew beer in the city.
Brewery founder Thomas Pastorius was back at the Vinial Street facility Tuesday morning, helping a small staff clean out the holding tanks, paint walls and buy equipment to replace items that were sold off for cash during the past year.
Pastorius put together an investment group that bought back the brewery from Birchmere Capital, a Marshall-based equity fund that acquired the company, Pennsylvania Brewing Co., from Pastorius in 2003. He expects to start brewing by the end of next week, with the first batch ready for drinking by the end of the year. Pastorius plans to reopen the brewery restaurant at the same time.
"We're going to invite the city over for a big grand reopening party," Pastorius said. "What we need is for Pittsburghers to ask for our beer at their local bars and restaurants to make sure we're on tap."
The reopening of Penn Brewery marks the first return of a production brewery to Pittsburgh since June, when Iron City Brewing Co. moved its operations from Lawrenceville to the City Brewing Co. plant in Latrobe.
At its peak, Penn Brewery turned out 12,000 barrels a year of German-style beer. Pastorius said he expects to turn out two to three times as much beer now by brewing different styles, perhaps including an American pale ale and a light beer.
Pastorius announced plans yesterday to restore the brewery's two marquee events, the Pennsylvania microbrewery festival on the first Saturday in June and an Oktoberfest celebration on the last two weekends in September.
For now, the first goal is trying to recapture market share that was lost during the past year after Birchmere moved the brewing operation to a contractor in Wilkes-Barre, said Corey Little, 45, of Ross, who is an investor in the reopened brewery. Pastorius said details of the sale are not being made public.
"We were trying to find a project we could get behind in Pittsburgh," Little said. "As locals and beer fans, we just got excited about it."
The investors are taking an active role in getting the facility ready to make beer again, Pastorius said. Partners Linda Nyman, 43, and her husband, both of Upper St. Clair, were at the building yesterday. A marketing expert, she was in the office working on a news release while he was painting the former brewery office.
Andy Rich, the brewery manager, used a rubber hose to wash off fermentation tanks that have been sitting empty for the past 11 months. The last batch came out of the brewery in December.
Rich spent the past year doing odd jobs—working in a law office for a while, and delivering sausages for three weeks—while waiting for someone to reopen the brewery.
"Everything is in pretty good shape," Rich said yesterday, standing among the stainless steel holding tanks. "It's just a matter of sprucing it up."
Copyright (c) 2009, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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