Pittsburgh Beer Scene Is 'Heaven With the Bottle Cap Off'

The rugged Pennsylvania city once known for being the world's steelmaking capital is now forging a reputation as a city of good suds.

On June 1, 2019, the East End Brewing Co. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, released Allentown, an Imperial Shandy that was the first in its You Are Here beer series aimed at producing a beer for every one of the city’s many neighborhoods. 

On May 6, the brewing company released Morningside, a Maibock Lager and the 64th beer in the series. Only 26 to go.

There are 90 different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and more than half that many breweries in the city and its suburbs, making the city a somewhat surprising eastern beer mecca. Now in its 18th year, East End Brewing is one of the more established of the 48 (at last count) small breweries.

"It's kinda crazy what the You Are Here series has evolved into,” says owner Scott Smith. "There are certain followers for this program, almost like neighborhood beer groupies, who follow us around the city to make sure they get every beer and explore these different neighborhoods with us. We try to highlight the beers at some defining business in the neighborhood at release. Although with number 58, Stanton Heights, there was no business to partner with, so we found one particularly enthusiastic resident and released the beer in their driveway."

East End Brewing is in the Larimer neighborhood. 

“Granted, we put our thumb on our random neighborhood selector for that one (No. 15), since it happened to coincide with our 15th anniversary day," Smith says. "For that one we took the local thing a step further and made a Local American Ale, all the ingredients from within 100 miles of the brewery."

Smith, on the board of the Pittsburgh Brewers Guild, says, "That’s an interesting part of the beer scene here, in that there’s no real large, dominant brewery — the pie is cut in a lot of pieces. We have more breweries than any other county in Pennsylvania, and we are not the biggest county."

"Heaven with the beer bottle cap off," would certainly be a better tag for Pittsburgh than what The Atlantic Monthly writer James Parton came up with in the January 1886 issue. Parton hung an epithet on the city that the steel smelting town couldn’t shake for a century, calling it, " ... hell with the lid taken off."

Pittsburgh was once home to more than 300 steel-related businesses. Five tourist stops are grouped into a nonprofit Rivers of Steel association, like the Carrie Blast Furnaces, a massive National Landmark site looming 92 feet over the Monongahela River, but the city’s domination over the U.S. steel industry is now decades in the rear view.

The city of 300,000 is still known as the City of Bridges, with 446 of them — more than Venice or anywhere else in the world, Pittsburgh claims (though New York, Amsterdam and Hamburg may disagree). And the City of Champions moniker refers to five Pirates World Series wins, five Penguins Stanley Cups, and six Steelers Super Bowl victories.

Pittsburgh has always done pretty well in the golf course category, too, particularly with such private tracks as Pittsburgh Field Club, the newly refashioned Fox Chapel and, naturally, Oakmont, recently named an anchor site for the U.S. Open and slated to host it in 2025, 2034, 2042 and 2049. It was at Oakmont that Jeff Becker first introduced his Links Brewing Co. beer in May 2020.

An avid golfer (9.2 index), Becker finally gave in to his passion for craft brewing and started brewing out of the offices of the family fire and safety protection company he still runs. As for Links Brewing, he says, “We’re a craft brewery that is extremely golf centric.”

As a devoted IPA fan, Becker and his team (there are five partners) first tested a 5.8% ABV (alcohol by volume) hazy pale ale, super hoppy, in 2019 at a course’s opening day: “Golfers were having a glass, which we were pouring for free, and then they’d go and pay for Michelob Ultra and the like. That was an eye-opener. We were giving beer away for free and the golfers were then paying to drink lighter-style beers. So we kept lowering the ABV, lightening the hops, until we came up with our flagship beer on its ninth iteration, a 4% ABV wheat ale. Still a craft beer — 100% all-grain — but made to compete with those lighter beers for a crushable, I-can-make-it-through-18-holes-without-falling-out-of-my-golf-cart style beer.”

Links Brewing has since produced stronger brews (including a hazy pale ale at 5.7% ABV), and is distributed at more than a dozen golf clubs in the Pittsburgh area. It has also produced, for Oakmont, its house 1903 Ale, which includes the clubhouse on the can artwork, and a rendering of the course’s famed church pew bunkers.

The Church Brew Works was once home to St. John the Baptist Church, which was built at the Liberty Avenue location in Lawrenceville in 1901.   / Tom Befell

Opened in 1996, The Church Brew Works is actually ensconced in a former church. Like many of Pittsburgh’s small breweries and taprooms, it brought a new vibrancy to a beat up old neighborhood (in this case, Lawrenceville). In any of the city’s and its suburbs newest brewery taprooms — Cinderlands Brew Co. (Strip District), Trace Brewing (Bloomfield), Mindful Brewing Co. (South Hills), Necromancer Brewing (North Hills), Grist House Craft Brewery (Millvale), Brew Gentleman (Braddock) the tables are crowded, the vibe is energetic and the beer lists, as well as the staffs, are distinctly diverse.

In an industry overwhelmingly run by white males, Trace Brewing founder Dave Kushner (a white male) has pointedly tried and succeeded in assembling a multi-cultural team that largely identifies as non-white. The Barrel & Flow Festival (scheduled for Aug. 13 in 2022), while open to all, is specifically aimed at showcasing Black breweries, artists and small businesses. And the Pittsburgh Brewery and Diversity Council has launched a collaborative She Knows Beer project that honors and supports women in the brewing industry through special beer releases.

The Council was founded by Adam Bey, a mixed-race co-owner of 412 Brewery (Allegheny West). But Bey also works one of the narrowest of craft beer niches, that as both a brewery owner and professional wrestler. His passion for both has led him to create the Brews and Bruises Festival, which is just what it sounds like — a beer festival with professional wrestling — taking place on June 4 at the Rostaver Ice Gardens in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania.

The event crosses over with Bey’s goal of diversity because, he said, “On the wrestling side, the majority of my roster is either female, a person of color or LGBTQ+. So we’re trying to showcase diversity there as well as with our PBDC efforts in the craft beer community."

Now in his late 40s, Bey has been making and taking throwdowns for 27 years. He says he’s been winding down his wrestling persona, Happy Hour. But will he take to the ring for Brews and Bruises? "If we do get a sellout, I think I have no choice."