Mt. Lebanon brewer to open new Strip District location
Mt. Lebanon resident Scott Smith founded East End Brewing Co. in 2004.
Mt. Lebanon resident Scott Smith founded East End Brewing Co. in 2004.
East End Brewing Co. produced about three dozen varieties of beer in 2015.
As a brewer, Mt. Lebanon resident Scott Smith has a special affinity for Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
“There’s no place else in the city, or in any other city that I can picture, no other neighborhood, where we open our doors at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning and there are people coming in to sample beer,” he said. “That’s the Strip.”
The owner of East End Brewing Co. – based, of course, on the East End – saw business flourish there for nearly six years with a stand in the Pittsburgh Public Market on Penn Avenue.
Although the market closed at the end of February, Smith plans to maintain a Strip District presence with the East End Brewery Taproom, around the corner on 19th Street between Penn and Smallman, “even a little better location, more in the heart of the action in the Strip,” Smith said.
On the culinary side, he is partnering with Eliza Jane Bowman, who ran the Eliza’s Oven baked good stand near his at the public market. She also provides “stuff that goes great with beer” for the brewpub at East End’s production facility, at Frankstown Avenue and Julius Street.
“We’re excited to have a place where you can actually sit down, have a couple of pints, have some dinner, have some lunch,” he said.
The space in the landmark Pennsylvania building is pretty much ready to go, and Smith has been working on some reconfiguring, signage and squaring away licensing issues with the state prior to the taproom’s opening.
A Regent Square native and mechanical engineer by trade, Smith got into the beer-brewing business in 2004, after returning to Pittsburgh for a corporate position.
“I stayed there for about six weeks before I said, I need to do something else,” he recalled. “I quit that job without anything really in mind and started working on a business plan for what is now East End Brewing.”
He and his wife, Julie, had encountered such operations in places they previously lived, such as Chicago and San Francisco. But the concept was new to Pittsburgh, with the exception of a few operations like the North Side’s Penn Brewery and Lawrenceville’s Church Brew Works.
“I kind of had this harebrained scheme to take my home-brewing hobby and turn it into a commercial operation,” Smith said. “We sunk everything we had into it and operated on a shoestring budget for a long, long time. I obviously have a very patient wife who also likes beer.”
East End produces a wide variety of beers, with about three dozen kegged during 2015.
“We’ve always kind of had a brewpub mentality,” Smith said. “Even though we’re a production brewery, I guess we have a little bit of ADD when it comes to keeping ourselves entertained and trying to keep our customers entertained.”
One of the more popular varieties is East End’s Pedal Pale Ale, and each year the brewery celebrates with a special fundraising event.
“We deliver the first kegs, by bicycle, to an undisclosed location,” Smith said. “I’m pulling a keg on a bicycle, so it’s a slow ride.”
This year’s Pedal Pale Ale Keg Ride is on the morning of April 23, and proceeds benefit ACLD Tillotson School in Whitehall.
For more information, visit www.eastendbrewing.com/events.