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Brewing for all Four Seasons

Posted March 3, 2016 • 1 comment

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:

Category: Westmoreland County | Tags: breweries, brewpubs, GABF

Going whole hog for Groundhog Day

Posted January 21, 2016 • 0 comment

Groundhog Day is a big deal around here.

How big? Think about it: with two beers being brewed to commemorate the 2016 edition of the day, there’s only one holiday — Christmas — that gets more attention from the brewers around here.

In the case of Straub in St. Mary’s, putting out a beer with a groundhog on the label has been a regular thing for years. Four years ago, though, its Groundhog Altbier represented a shift in the brewery’s very foundation. It was the first beer the brewery had produced since before Prohibition that wasn’t made with adjuncts … and it was the start of a shift towards a craft beer lineup that now includes about a dozen styles, mostly German.

The altbier serves as the brewery’s winter seasonal, and it’s perfectly suited for it. There is a little heft to the beer, rich and a touch sweet up front; that’s backed up with a balancing bitterness to finish. It’s delicious, and it would be perfect for drinking on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney … if such things were still allowed up there on Groundhog Day.

But you won’t have to drive to Punxy to meet the town’s most famous resident on Saturday, Jan. 23. You’ll just have to get to Penn Brewing on the North Side, to meet Punxsutawney Phil and to get a taste of Penn’s Punxsutawney Philsner, a beer made to commemorate the visit.

The Philsner tastes a bit like Penn Gold — OK, it tastes a lot like Penn Gold — but that’s not a bad thing; the Munich Helles is slightly biscuity, slightly spicy and perfectly balanced, and if Phil ever gets tired of the elixir he’s fed every few years to keep him going — this will be his 130th prognostication — I have to think he’d be happy with a glass of the Philsner.

And regardless of which beer we’re talking about, so will you.

Category: Region | Tags: breweries, Groundhog Day, seasonal beer

For Fat Head’s fans, there’s no rivalry in beer

Posted January 7, 2016 • 0 comment

I remember my first Head Hunter IPA.

I had tasted another Fat Head’s beer before, a tripel contract-brewed in Belgium for the Carson Street saloon and craft beer bar, but this was something else entirely. I didn’t know all the details then, but I had heard about a new Fat Head’s brewpub in Cleveland … and I had heard the IPA was excellent.

And that was an understatement; loaded with rich citrus and sharp pine flavors, Head Hunter wasn’t for the faint of heart, then or now … but it is for anyone who appreciates an aggressive, well-built IPA.

Since then, the Fat Head’s empire — spanning from the South Side to Cleveland’s western suburbs and now to a new brewpub in Portland, Oregon — has grown exponentially. The brand’s portfolio grows each year and with it the list of awards it brings home from the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup.

There definitely aren’t any signs of a rivalry between Glenn Benigni, who founded Fat Head’s in Pittsburgh nearly 25 years ago, and Matt Cole, the Ohioan who oversees the Fat Head’s breweries. And although I wondered about the arrangement when I first heard of it, there was nothing contentious about starting the brewing side in Cleveland; that’s where Mr. Cole found investors and a location as he finished up a years-long stint at Rocky River Brewing, also in the Cleveland area. A Fat Head’s franchise was sold in North Olmstead, and the Fat Head’s beer soon began flowing to the South Side.

“We look at it has having two backyards,” Mr. Benigni says when asked about the two cities. “We have the best of both worlds.”

And so do we, regardless of which city we call home.

Post-Gazette coverage of Fat Head’s:

Category: Ohio, Pittsburgh | Tags: breweries, brewpubs, tap room

Thankful for local beer on the table

Posted November 12, 2015 • 0 comment

Thanksgiving is just two weeks away and if you’re planning a full Thanksgiving dinner, you’ve got some decisions to make: How to cook the turkey? Sweet potatoes to go with the mashed? How many pies will be needed for dessert?

Oh, right — and what are we drinking?

Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t you skip the overly chilled bottle of chardonnay and track down a locally made beer to go with your bird?

Making the choice to serve beer isn’t hard; picking a specific beer or two, though, could feel a bit overwhelming. In the immediate area alone, there are dozens of breweries, each making multiple styles that would complement your feast. What’s the right choice to make?

Relax. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. First off, it would be tough to come up with a wrong choice; personal preference counts for a lot in this case. But if you’re still struggling, let Meg Evans, Jake Voelker, Scott Smith, Steve Ilnicki, Michael Murphy and Andy Kwiatkowski — all pros at local craft beer businesses — give you a hand.

I asked each one for recommendations for a beer they brew or pour that would work well with a traditional Thanksgiving meal; I got responses ranging from a saison to a combination of spiced pumpkin beer and a sturdy stout. Why the picks? It might be a broad pairing with most of the dishes that will show up on your table; it might also be a notion that a hefty oatmeal stout would stand up to a smoked turkey breast.

(We asked our pros for another pick, one that they’re not responsible for making or selling; I’ll post those in a bonus video on the Beer Me Facebook page early next week.)

A bunch of choices. All available locally. I hope you can find a couple that would work on your Thanksgiving table.

Category: Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Region | Tags: breweries, brewpubs, pumpkin beers, seasonal beer, Thanksgiving

Down on the Hop Farm

Posted August 6, 2015 • 1 comment

At almost two years old, Hop Farm Brewing has a growing problem.

Owner Matt Gouwens isn’t having any problems growing ingredients for the beer he brews at 56th and Butler streets in Lawrenceville; the day we visited, he was dumping home-grown lime basil into a tank of saison that will be ready to drink in a few short weeks.

Instead, the issue was the tanks themselves — as in, Mr. Gouwens didn’t have enough of them. That was partially corrected earlier this year, when gleaming new tanks came on line, more than doubling the brewery’s storage capacity. There could be more on the way soon, if the plan — more capacity and an expansion of the brewery’s in-house tap system to include as many as 15 lines, including one that will be dedicated to barrel-aged beers — comes to fruition.

In the meantime, Mr. Gouwens will continue to churn out a full line of staples and inventive seasonals and one-offs. In the tanks this week is the aforementioned — and as yet unnamed — lime basil saison; while we talked this week, he mentioned that his first-ever hefeweizen would be replaced this fall by a dunkelweizen … or maybe even a pumpkin dunkelweizen. Those go well with the raspberry-tinged Copperhop IPA the brewery made earlier this year and a growing sours program (Remember 2014’s sour blonde Margot? A barrel-aged version will be available soon).

And if the beer isn’t enough to get you to the brewery there are a handful of events coming up in the next month or two that should. The Lawrenceville Rock All Night Tour on Aug. 15 will bring bands, beers and several food trucks to 56th Street outside the brewery. The Aug. 30 King of the Wing event is sold out, although Mr. Gouwens said a few tickets could be released later this month. And tickets for the big one — the brewery’s 2nd anniversary party Sept. 25, which will feature more than two dozen food-and-beer pairings — will go on sale towards the end of this month. And that sounds like an excellent anniversary to me.

Category: Pittsburgh | Tags: breweries, brewpubs