Craft Brewing: Another Revolution in Pennsylvania

The history of brewing beer in Pennsylvania has seen heights of success and pits of disaster. The commonwealth grew from colonial home-brewing roots to become a recognized industrial center, home to some of the most notable brewers in America before the disaster of Prohibition. After bouncing back with Repeal, Pennsylvania clung to its established favorites longer than any other state, savoring regional beer independence. When the new revolution of microbrewing came along, Pennsylvania innovators leaped on board, making the Keystone State a leader in today’s bubbling craft brewery boom.

Yards Brewing Co. has been operating in Philadelphia since 1994. Their popular Ales of the Revolution—Thomas Jefferson’s Tavern Ale, Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce and General Washington’s Tavern Porter—are based on recipes known to the Founding Fathers. Yards Brewing Co.

Early Days

One of the first things European settlers did on reaching the New World was to set up breweries. Looking at them from today’s perspective, we would probably call them “craft breweries.” They did what they did on a basis of necessity, but they experimented with native grains, spruce twigs and starchy fruits like persimmons and pumpkins, and they were working on a very small scale.

Generally, though, brewers worked with malt brought by ship from Europe, until skilled maltsters started making it here. (Malt is sprouted barley, which is then kilned to kill the sprout. It is milled and mixed with hot water, which sparks chemical changes that create the sugars needed for fermentation.) Pennsylvania was no exception, with brewing taking place at sites as diverse as Philadelphia taverns and William Penn’s own Pennsbury Manor.

D.G. Yuengling & Son opened as the Eagle Brewery in Pottsville in 1829 and is now the oldest brewery operating in the United States. This c. 1855 view shows the front of the brewery with loading dock doors open. D.G. Yuengling & Son

These were small operations, but soon brewers were making larger quantities of beer for sale. William Frampton built a brewery in Philadelphia in 1685, likely the first commercial brewery in the colony, and two years later Anthony Morris built a brewery and malthouse near Frampton’s brewery.

Beer was generally a drink for the towns and cities. It was only good to drink for a week or so and needed a large base of customers to consume it. Outside of Philadelphia and the larger towns like Bethlehem, Reading and Lancaster, most people made and drank cider or distilled whiskey, often from rye.

By the time of the American Revolution, Pennsylvania beer had developed a good reputation. George Washington was a fan of Robert Hare’s Philadelphia-brewed dark porter. John Adams, who enjoyed a breakfast cup of cider when at home in Quincy, Massachusetts, wrote home from Philadelphia to his wife Abigail: “I drink no cider, but feast on Philadelphia beer.”

The beers of Pennsylvania were all of the ale-brewed type at this point, as were most of the beers in the world. They were fermented warm, and quickly, and put in casks to be served as soon as the secondary fermentation was done. This was how English ales were made and how English ales are still made.

But things were changing in brewing, and Pennsylvania was well ahead of the curve. German brewers had developed a new style, lager brewing, in which the beer was fermented cold, and aged cold, for a slower fermentation that yielded a crisper beer, more focused in character. It would become the beer that conquered the world, and Philadelphia’s John Wagner was the first to brew it in America in 1840.

Peter Straub bought Sorg’s Brewery in St. Marys in 1878 and formed Straub Brewery, pictured here c. 1895. Straub Brewery

Pennsylvania’s high proportion of German immigrants would keep that lager style popular right through Prohibition, and beyond, and lead the nation in its quality production. Frederick Lauer, the owner of the Lauer Brewery in Reading, Berks County, became the founding president of the United States Brewers Association in 1862 and was recognized as “the father of our industry.” Shortly after his death in 1883, the association voted funds to erect a large statue of him in Reading’s City Park. The statue was recently refurbished (courtesy of the Brewers Association and the Brewers of Pennsylvania) and unveiled a second time in May 2016.

The waves of Prohibition soon swamped Pennsylvania’s brewers, however, and even solid citizens like Frank Yuengling were forced to make near beer, malt syrup and ice cream so their businesses would survive. Happily, his 1920 prediction that “[Prohibition] will last 10 years, at the most, and we’ll be making beer again” was pretty close, and less than 14 years later, Pennsylvania’s brewers were back in action . . . for the time being.

While the consolidation that moved through the American brewing industry in the 40 years that followed Repeal didn’t miss Pennsylvania, it did have its lightest effects here. In 1977 there were less than 100 breweries left in America, but Pennsylvania still had 10 of them: Yuengling in Pottsville, Schuylkill County; The Lion in Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County; Straub in St. Marys, Elk County; Jones in Smithton, Westmoreland County; Latrobe (Rolling Rock) in Latrobe, Westmoreland County; Pittsburgh (Iron City) in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County; Horlacher and F. & M. Schaefer in Allentown, Lehigh County; and Ortlieb’s and Christian Schmidt’s in Philadelphia. Ten years later, those last four would be gone, but the first new brewery in Pennsylvania in almost 40 years would have opened, signaling a whole new chapter in Pennsylvania brewing: the micro/craft era.

Carol Stoudt, founder of Stoudt’s Brewing in Adamstown, Pennsylvania’s first microbrewery, which opened in 1987.
Stoudt’s Brewing Co.

Stirrings of Change

The renaissance of small brewing in America started in California in the 1970s. Fritz Maytag, of the appliance Maytags, bought the Anchor Brewing Co. in 1965, practically on a whim. Over the next 10 years, he made it into what he thought a proper brewery should be: all-malt beers, beers that paid homage to traditional brewing processes, and beers using American ingredients. He encouraged the first generation of new American breweries, like the short-lived New Albion and the much more successful Sierra Nevada.

The simple fact that these breweries could make beer and keep their doors open (Anchor took 10 years to be profitable, but is solidly successful to this day) was a revelation to similarly minded people in Pennsylvania. The first new breweries to open here reflected both the excitement and variety of the California brewers, but also the solidly German brewing traditions of the Keystone State, setting a regional tone that still resonates today.

The first true “brick and mortar” brewery to open in modern Pennsylvania was Stoudt’s in Adamstown, Lancaster County, founded by Carol and Ed Stoudt in 1987 at the site of their family restaurant. They broke new ground in two ways: the brewery made lager beer in true Pennsylvania style; and it was run and represented by Carol, a woman in what was very much a man’s world. She recalls her early days debuting Stoudt’s Golden beer in the Lancaster and Reading markets, when it was always a toss-up on which was more unusual: a new local beer or that it was a woman trying to sell it.

The two other new brewers, Pennsylvania Brewing and Dock Street Brewery, were at first examples of a new twist on an old idea: contract brewing, the practice of having your beer made at another brewery. They sold that beer to get cash flow going while they worked on opening their own operations.

Pennsylvania Brewing opened their brewpub in 1989 on the North Side of Pittsburgh in the old Eberhard & Ober Brewery building. Though there were difficult times after a divergence of direction with an investor in the mid-2000s, with the brewery coming perilously close to closing in late 2009, Pennsylvania is doing well today, and the brewpub remains popular.

Pennsylvania Brewing, better known as Penn Brewery, has been operating in the mid-19th-century Eberhart & Ober Brewery building in Pittsburgh since 1989. Here head brewer Nick Rosich is at work in the classic copper-kettle brewhouse.
Pennsylvania Brewing Co.

Dock Street opened their pub at 18th and Cherry streets in Philadelphia in 1990 and had a great run, but found difficulties after their lease ran out. After some strange detours and personal business issues among the founders, Dock Street has returned to the brewpub scene in a converted fire hall at 50th Street and Baltimore Avenue, where their joyfully diverse brewing reigns in a determinedly 1980s-style bare-bones setting.

Both breweries continued to have beer contract-brewed for them for quite a while after they were in production themselves. The contracted beer was typically the biggest seller, and usually the beer sold in 12-ounce bottles. Stoudt’s also relied on contract brewing for the bulk of their production for some years before taking all brewing in-house.

Contract brewing also helped keep the lights on at the big old regional breweries in Pennsylvania. The Lion, Jones and Iron City did quite a bit of contract work. (Straub dabbled in it, but didn’t have enough excess capacity to take on any large clients.) Another Philadelphia craft brewer, Red Bell, had a lot of beer made at The Lion before opening their own operation in the old Poth brewery in Philadelphia’s “Brewerytown” neighborhood in 1996.

Big blocks of compressed whole-flower hops are broken up and added to give aromatic bitterness to Victory beer.
Victory Brewing Co.

Explosive Growth

The 1990s saw the first real surge in brewery openings in Pennsylvania, but the really big story was the resurgence of the country’s oldest “craft” brewery: Yuengling. This is when the old coal country brewery found a formula that worked. First there was Black & Tan, a brewery-mixed blend of their mainstream Premium and darker Porter. B&T was on allocation in southeast Pennsylvania, just crazily popular in the big black 16-ounce cans.

But that was only a precursor to the craze that was created by Yuengling Traditional Lager, a beer that was a little darker, a little more flavorful, and a lot less nationally distributed than the big sellers in the marketplace. Once it got established in Philly’s riverfront clubs and the bars of State College, Centre County, the old brewery in Pottsville just couldn’t keep up. They went to two shifts a day, six days a week; they put in the first brewery expansion in decades; they tweaked the brewing process for more volume.

Tröegs Independent Brewing in Hershey recently added this spectacular new Splinter Cellar, where wood and wild yeasts give unique flavors to their beers.
Tröegs Independent Brewing Co.

Eventually they’d build a new brewery across town and buy an old Stroh brewery in Tampa, Florida. That’s holding steady for now and has given the brewery enough breathing room to actually start making some more crafty beers, like Bock and Summer Wheat. But the Traditional Lager is still the tail wagging the dog, and it’s not just in Pennsylvania anymore. Call for “Lager” most places on the Eastern Seaboard these days, and you’ll get a Yuengling.

There were lots of smaller things going on as well. There was a blossoming of breweries in Pittsburgh. Three Rivers opened in 1996, along with Church Brew Works (in an actual church), and 1997 saw Valhalla, Strip and the Foundry, along with an outpost of the John Harvard’s brewpub chain out in Wilkes. They were fun while they lasted and made mostly good beers – some great – but only Church has survived.

Philadelphia got some more places, like tiny little Yards Brewing in Manayunk, which has now moved three times; more on that later. Manayunk Brewing opened a huge brewpub right along the canal by the Schuylkill River, which got pretty dicey in September 1999 during Hurricane Floyd, when the big steel fermenters floated right off the floor. The Samuel Adams Brew House opened on the second floor over the Sansom Street Oyster House, then became Nodding Head brewpub in late 1999, which would close in 2014 with plans to reopen as a production brewery.

Philly also got three solidly backed breweries, with a lot of money behind them, in the mid-1990s. Independence opened in the northeast part of town in 1995, brewing the very solid Franklinfest lager. Red Bell, as mentioned, opened their brewery in 1996 and also opened a brewpub in what was then the CoreStates Center arena (now the Wells Fargo Center) later that summer. And in 1997 Henry Ortlieb opened a cavernous brewpub and production brewery, Poor Henry’s, in the former Ortlieb brewery bottling house on American Street in Philadelphia, just around the corner from where John Wagner brewed that first batch of lager. Things do come around.

Cellarman Zane Miller at Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton pumps beer into a bourbon barrel to age and flavor the brew.
Weyerbacher Brewing Co.

It wasn’t just happening in the big cities either. Around this same time, three breweries opened in Reading – all to close within five years – and two breweries opened in Harrisburg, Dauphin County: Appalachian Brewing and Tröegs Brewing, both of which are booming along now. Appalachian’s Harrisburg brewpub has expanded, and they’ve opened five more operations in the area. Tröegs moved into a large, purpose-built facility in nearby Hershey, where they’ve recently added a substantial wood-aging facility (with the same kind of big wooden aging vats Yuengling used 50 years ago; things really do come around).

Sly Fox opened as a tiny brewpub in Phoenixville, Chester County, in 1995, and once brewer Brian O’Reilly signed on, the place has grown. They moved across the road to a bigger space and opened a production brewery in Royersford, Montgomery County. When that wasn’t enough, they opened a new brewery in Pottstown, Montgomery County. (Stickman Brewing is in the old space in Royersford now.)

Weyerbacher opened in gritty riverside Easton, Northampton County, in 1995 and moved through several phases and identities before finding success in brewing big, bold beers. Victory opened in Downingtown, Chester County, in 1996 and has seen solid success and steady growth into the top echelon of craft brewing, with a large production brewery opening in 2015 in nearby Parkesburg. The Bullfrog Brewery opened in downtown Williamsport, Lycoming County, in 1996 and has raised the beer-drinking bar there substantially, keeping pace with the boom in fracking-sourced money rolling into town. Tiny Selin’s Grove Brewing in Selinsgrove, Snyder County, celebrated 20 years in 2016 and hasn’t really grown at all, something that surely pleases everyone involved on both sides of the bar.

The Reckoning

A variety of issues were looming around this time of growth and diversity, though. Too many brewers across the country were overextended: on distribution, on plans, on expertise and equipment, and on debt. While more breweries continued to open, the amount of craft beer being sold was losing its steam. The growth curve went flat amid a plethora of new, largely undifferentiated brands. Consumers and brewers both were unsure about what these new beers should be, and investors were charging into what looked like a booming industry with wads of cash and a lack of plans.

After struggling with debt on expansion that was no longer needed, the increase in number of breweries tapered off as more of them closed than opened. Brewers tried to keep focused on finding their way ahead, but some just kept spending money, looking for a way to rekindle the fire.

It didn’t work. Independence, which had run an ill-advised billboard campaign urging people to “get it while it lasts,” ran out of money and time in 2000. Poor Henry’s went under in the same year, and Red Bell closed (mostly) less than two years later, after opening a tiny brewpub in Manayunk that operated for a week, and not opening a substantial new brewpub right in Center City that was tied up in legal actions (it would finally open as Independence, related in name only to the failed brewery, and then finally become a sports bar). The brewpub at CoreStates Center (by then the Wachovia Center) limped along for a few more years. It was a series of crashes that would have a lasting effect on brewing in Philadelphia, as investors were now leery of breweries.

Small breweries closed across the state – Hackett’s in Scranton, Lackawanna County; Primo Barone’s (the restaurant is still open) in Franklin, Venango County; Jack’s Mountain in Lewistown, Mifflin County – and three of the big ones finally closed as well. Pittsburgh Brewing/Iron City closed somewhat suddenly after years of uncertainty and second chances. Latrobe had been sold to Labatt, and when the Rolling Rock brand was sold to Anheuser-Busch, the brewery was no longer needed. It did finally find a purpose as a contracting brewer and runs in a much smaller capacity these days. Jones fell apart under bad management and a strange set of money schemes and was sold for salvage.

The only good news was the continued success of Yuengling and some stirring at The Lion and Straub, where the idea of craft was starting to be embraced. (The Lion was also brewing oceans of malta soda for Goya, which kept the cash flowing in.) There was also the quirky success at Weyerbacher, where a huge barleywine called Blithering Idiot, a last-ditch toss of the dice, came up a big winner and saved the brewery.

Tapping fresh brew at Fegley’s Bethlehem Brew Works.
Fegley’s Bethlehem Brew Works, thebrewworks.com

Resurgence and Triumph

While brewers without money and clear direction went under (and some who were just unlucky joined them), some brewers soldiered on, slowly building their brands. The Fegley family built Bethlehem Brew Works into a potent anchor of urban rebirth in the heart of Bethlehem, Lehigh County, and would eventually work the same magic in Allentown. Appalachian had similar effects in Harrisburg. One wonders how many people appreciate the effects of these two brewers on their respective neighborhoods.

Pittsburgh saw new breweries open at this time: an extension of the Munich-based Hofbräuhaus, complete with huge beerhall and plenty of pork dishes; and at the other end of the extravagance scale, East End Brewing, tucked into a rough little neighborhood behind a rusty door with no sign. East End is now in a big new place with a great new taproom, the product of good beer, boundless energy and frugality.

The first brewer at Bullfrog, Charlie Schnable, opened his own place in State College, Otto’s (named after his cat), and grew that into a big, big brewpub that has now added a distillery pub across the parking lot, Barrel 21. Up the road in the tiny crossroads town of Millheim, Tim Bowser, who’d started the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture in 1992, took those same ideas, added great live music and an award-winning brewer, and opened a community-rooted brewpub named Elk Creek Cafe + Aleworks in late 2007, and it’s happily chugging along.

Those two were the far west end of a crescent of breweries all along the Appalachian front, running from there through Old Forge in Danville, Montour County, up to the Bullfrog in Williamsport, to Marley’s and the Inn at Turkey Hill in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, and Berwick Brewing, solidly anchored at the east end by the increasingly customer-and-craft-friendly Lion in Wilkes-Barre. For a time around 2007, this was the hottest spot in Pennsylvania brewing.

Serving up brew at East End’s Brewery Taproom in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
East End Brewing Co. / Photo by Matt Dayak

About this same time, Philadelphia got another brewery in a rough fashion. Yards investors Bill and Nancy Barton weren’t happy with the way Yards was going, and neither was founder Tom Kehoe. They split in 2007, and the Bartons opened Philadelphia Brewing in what had been Yards’ new digs in Kensington, and Kehoe moved Yards over to Delaware Avenue. Both companies have succeeded. Yards has outgrown the Delaware Avenue site and is building a new place in the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

By now, craft brewing had caught its breath. Nationally, growth exploded in 2007 and, despite the Great Recession, hasn’t really slowed down since. Pennsylvania has fully joined in the growth phase.

Yuengling is now the largest American-owned brewery; the second-largest, Boston Beer, has their main brewery outside of Allentown. The state’s largest craft brewers are all expanding: Victory, Tröegs, Sly Fox, Yards, Weyerbacher. There are over 200 breweries in the state, with more coming every month, too many to mention. Pennsylvania makes beers that are the favorites of oldsters and hipsters alike: solid and traditional lagers, juicy and aromatic IPAs, complex and surprising saisons, funky barrel-aged sours and wild ales. There are breweries that specialize in one type; there are breweries that cover the gamut.

And up in St. Marys, Straub keeps chugging along, still largely unchanged by the whole craft movement, ready like Yuengling and The Lion to survive the next revolution in Pennsylvania brewing.

Today’s bottling operation at Straub. Straub Brewery

Lew Bryson lives in Bucks County and is a freelance writer specializing in beer and spirits. He is the author of the books Pennsylvania Breweries and Tasting Whiskey as well as numerous articles in trade and consumer magazines. He was the winner of the 2008 Michael Jackson Beer Journalism Award (Trade and Media).