Pittsburgh brewing up a storm

For a city of relatively modest size, the beer community today in Pittsburgh is buzzing with… For a city of relatively modest size, the beer community today in Pittsburgh is buzzing with activity.

It is the home of several microbreweries, such as the East End Brewing Company in Homewood, as well as numerous brewpubs — microbreweries that double as restaurants — including the Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville and Hofbrauhaus in the South Side.

But this wasn’t always the case.

When the doors of the Pennsylvania Brewing Company first opened in 1989, craft brewing in the United States was still in its infancy.

In Pittsburgh, the introduction of the Penn Pilsner by Tom Pastorius, founder of Penn Brewery, assisted in laying the groundwork for what has ultimately become a nationwide upsurge in craft brewing.

Even so, the situation just a few years ago was quite different, observed Scott Smith, founder of the East End Brewing Company.

“When I moved back to Pittsburgh after being away for about 15 years, I found that while there was a lot of good beer being served, there wasn’t much being offered locally.” Smith said.

“There really wasn’t a local beer like what was being served out West.”

Smith’s brewery, based out of what had previously been an abandoned warehouse nestled on Susquehanna Street, began operations in December, 2004 and, in the years that followed, blossomed into one of Pittsburgh craft brewing’s most unbridled successes.

“My goal with the brewery at first was just to survive,” Smith said, laughing. “But we ended up growing a considerable following through word-of-mouth.”

Perhaps most surprising is Smith’s admission that that he spends nothing on advertising the brewery — quite astounding considering that, for many patrons, even locating the brewery is a challenge, as East End’s nondescript location is marked only by a simple stencil stamped onto the steel door of the building that it occupies.

However, the runaway success of East End Brewing Co. has allowed Smith to engage in several other pursuits, most notably the Keg Race, an event co-sponsored by bike advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh, which just concluded its sixth year in May.

“Basically, we deliver the first kegs of Pedal Pale Ale, our summer beer, by bicycle and give everyone who participates a free beer at the end when we reach our destination,” Smith explained. “The catch, though, is that the only people who know where they’re going are the keg-pullers, so you need to follow them.”

Smith noted that the 2010 edition of the Keg Race had seen the strongest turnout yet, with 700 people in attendance. He added that the ride is also used to “highlight sustainability” because the trip generates almost no solid waste.

While small ventures such as East End might seem to put the micro in microbrewery, Steve Panos, brewmaster of Homestead’s Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, said that beer enthusiasts don’t necessarily need to be frightened of the big bad wolf commercial beer.

“Even the corporate brewpub has its place,” Panos said.

Although the Homestead brewpub is part of a chain that includes roughly two dozen separate locations, Panos stressed that “when dealing with a local market, you can’t just sell the same beer everywhere.”

“We don’t have any sort of ‘corporate recipe.’ Each brewery operates independently of the others and makes its own unique brews,” he said.

Panos explained this approach by using the example that “in Pittsburgh, you’re going to sell a lot of lagers and German-influenced beers. And while there is a niche market for them, drinkers here aren’t nearly as hop-crazy as the IPA producers on the West Coast.”

While the ownership of Rock Bottom set it apart from independent breweries such as East End or Penn, Panos said that “any brewery, corporate or not, has a lot of potential.”

“There’s a lot of market share out there for everyone, and beer’s not the kind of industry where you’re trying to eat everyone up. It’s very communal.”

Indeed, the communal aspect of brewing is one of the areas where Smith and Panos share similar views, particularly the unique form that it has taken on in Pittsburgh.

“It definitely seems to be growing here,” Panos said. “There are a lot of bars out there that really care about carrying good beer, and when you compare Pittsburgh’s brewing community to a city the size of, say, Chicago, which only had a few breweries despite being much larger, it really brings things into focus.”

Smith, on the other hand, emphasized the impact of the Internet in creating a local network of beer enthusiasts, which has evolved alongside organizations such as Pittsburgh Craft Beer.

However, Smith added that while there is no experience quite like sharing a good brew with friends, he feels “beer is something very personal.”

“It’s something that you ingest into your body. What could be more personal than that?”