There’s nothing like a little hardware to give a new craft brewery a shot in the arm.
Latrobe’s Four Seasons Brewing Co. had made it through the hard part — finding a home, finding some capital and finding some equipment — and had been in business for not quite a year when, on a fall night in 2014, Mark Pavlik noticed that the brewery’s name kept popping up on social media.
The messages were from the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado, and they told Mr. Pavlik, the brewer and owner, that his oatmeal stout, Dark Side of the Pint, had won a silver medal for the style.
Things were going well at that point, Mr. Pavlik said, but the medal brought the kind of attention that money can’t buy. It wasn’t the only reason the brewery has been able to double capacity since then — and it’s not the sole thing behind Mr. Pavlik being able to convert what started as a growler shop into a full pub — but the hardware definitely helped.
You’ll find Dark Side of the Pint on tap — and maybe on nitro, a creamy treat — when you visit the Four Seasons pub on Lloyd Avenue Extension in Latrobe, along with some others that have become favorites of mine: Bang Bang Double IPA, a juicy bombshell that masks its alcohol-by-volume of nearly 9 percent, and Local, a crisp, hoppy American pale ale that is guaranteed to make a pizza taste twice as good.
You may also soon find Dark Side or Bang Bang in bottles or cans near you. Four Seasons recently took over an additional section of its leased building, and although he doesn’t yet know specifics, Mr. Pavlik has plans for packaging sometime soon.
And that’s great news, regardless of the season.
Post-Gazette coverage of Four Seasons Brewing: