5 Albums We Played The Hell Out Of In 2020

As 2020 comes to a close, we give you one of our most beloved traditions: our year-end album list. For a look back at previous installments, check out our lists from the last six years: 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

We don’t necessarily assert that these five albums are the best albums of the year, as authoritative lists like that are best left to music blogs and magazines. They are merely the ones we played the hell out of, a glimpse into an important part of our company culture: our collective soundtrack.

So without further ado, here are 5 Albums We Played The Hell Out Of In 2020.

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1. The Beach Boys – The Smile Sessions (2011)

The plot arc of Smile goes a bit like this: struggling to create a worthy follow-up to The Beach Boys’ avant garde but then-unsuccessful Pet Sounds (1966), Brian Wilson decides to ratchet his progressive aspirations up to eleven and create a sprawling opus called Smile. He constructs a series of musical vignettes drawing from every corner of Americana, and assembles a prodigious orchestra of studio musicians to help him bring these vignettes to life. But progress eventually stalls, crippled by Wilson’s manic lack of focus and fanatically eccentric commitment to his vision. Tensions within the group worsen. Exacerbated by a steady diet of psychedelics and amphetamines, his sanity collapses. Smile gets scrapped.

Like a museum exhibit displaying the fragmented contents of a visionary’s sketchbook, The Smile Sessions is an archival release of this abandoned masterpiece, curated and compiled in 2011 by a team of audio engineers. The album features a handful of mostly complete compositions perforated by rough snippets of arrangements, strung together to create a psychedelic collage that winds up somewhere between a great American road trip and those play town rugs from the nineties. It’s pure inner child, wide-eyed and whimsical, like a circus composed entirely of sideshows.

While Pet Sounds may have become the go-to juxtaposition of Brian Wilson’s genius against the backdrop of his psychological decline, Smile illustrates that theme to its fullest: a would-be masterpiece that collapsed under the weight of its own vision. Thanks to The Smile Sessions, we’re allowed to peek through the keyhole at what could have been.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Surf’s Up [4:12] 

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2. Various Artists – The BG Oldies Playlist

During a year when so many of us found solace in familiar comforts, it’s no surprise that an ever-expanding playlist of oldies classics became one of our most frequent soundtracks. For many of us here at BG, these were the songs we absorbed as children from the back seats of our parents’ cars, becoming the lens through which we viewed an era decades before our own births.

Given the glaring absence of oldies amongst Pittsburgh’s depressingly lackluster radio offerings, we’ve been forced to take matters into our own hands. From the cowboy ballads and big band bangers of the forties, to the early rock n’ roll pioneers and doo-wop ensembles of the fifties, to the warm Motown soul and paisley psychedelia of the sixties, we’ve done our best to compile hundreds of our favorite hits across dozens of genres into a single nostalgia-packed playlist – mainly so that we can belt them at the tops of our lungs while canning General Braddock’s.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Dawn (Go Away) by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons [2:48] 

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3. Caribou – Suddenly (2020)

Suddenly is precisely the type of heady electronic pop  you’d expect from a middle-aged Canadian synth whiz with a PhD in mathematics and a seemingly razor-thin range of facial expressions. On his fifth release as Caribou, Dan Snaith employs crisp dancefloor sensibilities and loose meanderings alike, all woven together with his gentle, intimate falsetto. Part songwriter and part engineer, Snaith takes a tenderly-crafted message about home and family and feeds it through every machine in his shop: some compression here, some distortion there, often wandering slightly out of sync or off-pitch for an added tinge of discomfort. Suddenly is certainly nonlinear, but retains a tightness of execution that paints each individual branch as part of the same tree.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: You and I [4:03]

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4. The Band / Various Artists – The Last Waltz (1978)

Among the many unfortunate lessons 2020 has taught us is to never again take live music for granted. In the absence of a packed concert schedule, many of us had to find our own ways to perform and consume live music from the solitude of our homes, which just isn’t the same. But if we’re doing the best with what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is The Last Waltz, we’re doing ok.

The Band was never the flashiest act of the post-folk seventies, but as musicians’ musicians, their rolodex ran deep. Their legendary 1978 farewell concert saw them assemble an all-star collection of friends: eyeliner-phase Bob Dylan; an otherworldly Joni Mitchell; a pudgy, balding, and jaw-droppingly transcendental Van Morrison; the gospel powerhouse Staple Singers; seventies mafia movie Neil Diamond; animate cocaine baggie Neil Young; a shamanic Muddy Waters; Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood stopping by for dessert. And, of course, The Band themselves – one of the most American bands of all time, 80% made up of Canadians.

While the concert album is certainly a thing of beauty, it’s Martin Scorcese’s concert film (available on Hulu) that better captures the energy of such a historic occasion – red velvet, gaudy chandeliers, and a delightful cross-section of a specific musical era.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band [4:37]

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5. Gotye – Like Drawing Blood (2006)

Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Gotye is best known for his out-of-nowhere 2011 megahit “Somebody That I Used To Know”, a song from his third album that sounded nothing like the prevailing pop radio singles of the time. His prior album, 2006’s Like Drawing Blood, takes the opposite approach: it’s a field trip through well-established genres and tropes from around the globe, each filtered through the dark pop sensibilities of a self-described musical tinkerer. An opener with Middle Eastern chord scales, a matched pair of tracks with trudging dub rhythms, and an exceptionally true-to-form Motown track all pop up along the way, his sonic caravan weighed down with trinkets and baubles from hither and yon.

The crowning achievement, however, is the album’s single, “Hearts A Mess” – a plodding, mysterious track that transitions from a sparse and creepy walk through the jazziest nightmare ever into a strung-out, pleading climax and back again. 

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Hearts A Mess [6:05]

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HONORABLE MENTIONS: Our Personal Picks

Asa’s Pick: Sufjan Stevens – The Ascension (2020)
With an opener that evokes the experience of peaking on laboratory hallucinogens while trapped in a burning building, it becomes immediately clear that this is not the banjo-plucking Sufjan Stevens of yore. His 2020 LP The Ascension is dissonant and apocalyptic, unsettlingly beautiful during its quiet moments and throwing massive, glitched-out haymakers when backed into a corner.
If you’re only going to listen to one song: Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse [5:18]

Matt’s Pick: Spencer Brown – Stream of Consciousness (2020)
Spencer Brown puts a huge emphasis on allowing his DJ craft to inform his studio output, and it shows with his continuously mixed, dynamic album Stream of Consciousness. Many of these tracks started as ID’s in his DJ sets over the last five years (several of which I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live), and this meticulously produced album brings it all together to blur the lines between deep house, progressive house, and trance. The energy ebbs and flows but never loosens its grip, guiding the listener on a rolling hour-long journey. 
If you’re only going to listen to one song: Since it’s a continuous album, start at the start, SF to Berlin [6:13]

Alaina’s Pick: HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III (2020)
Women in Music Pt. III, the third album release from this sister trio, is experimental, emotional, and excellent. The tight vocals and heartfelt songwriting that distinguish their previous two pop rock albums continue to captivate, while freshly demonstrative lyrics address themes ranging from love and personal purpose to depression and misogyny with an impressive level of both pragmatism and poetry. Layered with synth-heavy beats, original instrumentation, and clever arrangements, the result is as forthright and critical as it is dance-inducing and delightful.
If you’re only going to listen to one song: I Know Alone [3:46]

Tom’s Pick: PUP – Morbid Stuff (2019)
Like most modern Americans, I let algorithms do most of my thinking for me now. And according to Spotify, the album I listened to the most during this awful year was PUP’s newest LP, Morbid Stuff. Our previous head brewer, Zach Gordon, introduced me to PUP when I joined the BG crew back in August of 2019, and I’ve been hooked ever since. They play a form of snarling, frustration-laced hardcore pop-punk that, while whiny at times, is undeniably catchy. Beneath the frantic hooks and sing-along choruses lie heavy themes of depression, substance abuse, nihilism, self-loathing, and existential dread… it’s also hilarious. It’s the perfect soundtrack for watching the corrupt institutions of late-stage capitalism unravel and fall apart. Because as chaos reigns in this disease-ridden, post-truth world, what else can one do but laugh?
If you’re only going to listen to one song:  Kids [3:30]

The Rise of General Braddock’s

It has long been standard procedure here at Brew Gentlemen to refrain from talking about projects while they’re still in motion. Not only does publicly announcing one’s plans make them statistically less likely to be achieved, it also puts you in the unenviable position of having to explain why things didn’t work out in the event that they don’t.

This policy of maintaining a Space Race-like level of secrecy until the moment we’re ready to yank the sheet off of whatever we’ve created was all the more necessary for a project as grand in scope as putting our flagship beer into cans. Years of work took place nearly entirely behind the scenes, with progress being shared only with our closest friends and family. Now that cans are out in the world, there’s a lot we can finally share with you – and thus, dear reader, we present the full story of General Braddock’s.

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PART ONE: THE GENERAL COMES TO LIFE

The earliest conceptual ancestor to the beer that would eventually be called General Braddock’s, even though it bore little resemblance in either color or flavor to its modern counterpart, was on the right track. Having begun brewing in our fraternity garage only after deciding to start a brewery during our junior year, we were intent on making an IPA built for balance right from the start. The now-omnipresent New England-style IPA had yet to jump the fences of its namesake region and saturate the American craft beer industry, but the idea of an East Coast answer to the West Coast’s aggressively bitter IPAs was by no means a new thing. Balance was the way.

As our senior year went on and we settled on Braddock as the brewery’s eventual home, we wanted to use our yet unnamed flagship to pay homage to the steel town we had become so deeply entranced by. With such a rich and layered history, Braddock was overflowing with people, places, and things to name a beer after. The most recognizable among them, however (names like George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, or the Edgar Thomson Steel Works), seemed far too presumptuous for two college students to lay claim to. In the end, we settled on General Edward Braddock, a British general best known for his catastrophic defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755 while leading an expedition to capture Fort Duquesne from the French – and little else. An obscure historical figure with a relatively uncontroversial legacy; essentially a blank slate. Edward Braddock checked all the boxes.

We opened our doors two years after graduating, with General Braddock headlining a launch day lineup of five flagship beers. That number would eventually be whittled down to the General alone. The industry around us was undergoing a period of major transition, and the hazy IPA was soon to become the poster child of the decade. We planted our flag in the ground as the first regularly available hazy IPA in western Pennsylvania in 2015, and the General Braddock’s we now know began to take shape. Momentum built with Paste Magazine naming it #2 on a list of 247 American IPAs the following year, and Draft Magazine naming it one of the 25 best IPAs in America a year after that. It was becoming increasingly obvious that General Braddock’s needed to be placed at the center of our operation.

The pace of change within the industry hastened. New breweries were sprouting up seemingly every month. The taproom model reigned supreme. Mobile canning outfits and new packaging methods allowed even the smallest breweries to put their beer in cans; the growler, once the veritable symbol of small breweries through the 1990s and 2000s, seemed wildly inconvenient by comparison. As the fatigue of releasing new beers weekly in order to retain the customer’s attention began to set in, the urge to simplify our business by focusing on a single brand seemed like the best path forward.

As we became more committed to the flagship model, we saw that the title of “Pittsburgh’s IPA” – a designation we defined as being a.) widely available within the Pittsburgh area, and b.) well known outside of it – had yet to be claimed. If we hoped for General Braddock’s to one day fill that role, we needed to get it into cans… and to get it into cans, we needed to build a bigger brewery.

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PART TWO: THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MONONGAHELA

We broke ground in the spring of 2019, jackhammering up the floors of the warehouse we’d been anxiously holding onto for two years. After a long and tedious planning phase, work had finally begun on the General’s new home: an 13,000-square-foot, production-scale brewhouse with plenty of room to grow.

Amidst the dirt and rubble, a separate and far less dusty project was already in motion. We had committed to packaging General Braddock’s in a 12oz slim can during a trip to Nashville the previous year for the 2018 Craft Brewers Conference, a decision we felt confident in despite the increased difficulty of acquiring them and the recurring eyebrow raises we received from those we informed. Slim cans presented a sleeker alternative to the timeless-but-stubby 12oz can, and, as a bonus, were not widely used in the craft beer space (a landscape that had recently come to be dominated by 16oz cans). They felt nice to look at and nice to hold.

A design began to emerge, drawing influence from vintage beer labels, European football crests, and historical monuments. By July of 2019 we had submitted the finished drawings to the Ball Corporation – the world’s largest manufacturer of aluminum containers – making note of our additional desire that the cans be printed with a matte finish.

We could nearly make out the audible scratch of a record skipping as the action ground to a halt. We were informed that there are matte-finish cans, and there are slim cans, but there are no matte-finish slim cans. Not yet, at least. The first trials of such were set to be produced during a pilot program at Ball’s facility in Monterrey, Mexico in Q1 of the coming year. We asked if they needed additional guinea pigs. They politely declined.

Disheartened but not yet ready to abandon our very specific vision, we continued pressing our contacts at Ball for weeks in search of a solution. The answer remained a no.  Just as we began to make peace with the reality that we weren’t getting everything on our wish list, a somewhat perplexing email arrived that made reference to our participation in the Monterrey pilot program as if that had been the plan all along.

Thus began five months of world championship-grade phone tag. While our friends at Ball were always incredibly friendly and helpful, nailing down any additional details about our production run was nearly impossible. Phone calls, voicemails, texts, emails, and the odd homing pigeon went unanswered for weeks at a time. Even after flying out to Ball’s Colorado headquarters in February of 2020 to sign off on the final colors for the cans, we were unable to nail down an additional in-person meeting with our primary contact. The only morsel of information we were able to squeeze out was a somewhat ambiguous confirmation that we were still on track, despite now being halfway through the previous estimate of Q1 2020 and nearly finished with construction. We weren’t exactly optimistic.

Less than a month later, the world as we knew it was flipped on its head. The ongoing pandemic had reached the U.S., and we made the tough decision to close our taproom indefinitely and begin offering our beer in crowlers. After months of uncertainty, we were now sure that this would be the death of our plans for General Braddock’s.

As expected, Ball reached out with some disconcerting news. The raw materials required for the matte finish pilot in Monterrey (which were not certified for use in the United States, hence the project taking place in Mexico) had been irreparably damaged while being held up in German customs. This, along with the rapidly-worsening global health situation, caused Ball to cancel the program outright.

With less than six weeks to go before our targeted launch date, morale was not high. A number of things, namely the continued financial stability of our company, relied on a mid-year launch at the absolute latest.

Good news finally came a few days later. While the matte finish was no longer an option, production would be able to begin nearly immediately if we opted to go with a satin finish instead. If a slightly-less-tactile texture was the only concession we’d have to make in exchange for meeting our original deadline after all, that seemed like a completely reasonable price to pay. We couldn’t sign the new proofs fast enough.

In true Brew Gentlemen fashion, everything came right down to the wire. The freshly-printed cans arrived two days before our scheduled canning date. The cardboard case flats and plastic four-pack holders arrived the following day. In spite of five months of uncertainty and the total disruption of society, our launch was pushed back from the original date by only a single week. As the mobile canning operation pulled their box truck into the building and unloaded their equipment, we knew this was the first day of a brand new chapter.

The first cans off the line tasted so goddamn good.

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PART THREE: BRADDOCK’S EXPEDITION

Between the major internal event of launching a new packaging format (a milestone we had spent over two years preparing for) and the major external event that upended the entire world around us (changing the way that beer is sold and consumed more drastically than anything since the repeal of Prohibition), it began to feel as though we’d jettisoned the business we had been running for six years and started a new company altogether.

For us, the metrics by which we measure our own progress have been flipped upside down. Before May, nearly all of the beer we made was sold on draught – both in our own taproom and in a select few bars around the city. By the end of July, however, more than 90% of our beer was sold in cans and crowlers.

A shift of this magnitude can be felt in every aspect of our business: how we make beer, how we sell beer, and how we interpret the numbers and velocity behind each. The metrics by which we determined the success of our taproom seems in hindsight like the divination of tea leaves and animal entrails when compared to the simple integers and objective benchmarks of wholesale distribution.

The future of General Braddock’s is now more open-ended than ever. Cases will continue popping up on new shelves as we steadily expand wholesale distribution. Online ordering will become more streamlined as we continue to incorporate new functionality based on your feedback. And even though we have no plans to reopen our taproom in its original form, we are looking into other creative ways to bring you the BG experience in its stead.

Ever since the days when General Braddock’s was bubbling away atop a propane burner in our fraternity garage, we have always tried to be strict on vision and flexible on details. A few wild months in the spring of 2020 demanded more flexibility than ever before, enough so that once the dust settled, it was as if we had woken up in a different body. Everything changed except for our original vision: to focus on our flagship beer, and to continue sharing it with the world.

Seeing all the ways that you, in turn, are enjoying General Braddock’s and sharing it with others continues to be the greatest reward imaginable.

5 Albums We Play The Hell Out Of In Specific Situations

As 2019 comes to a close, we give you one of our most beloved traditions: our year-end album list. For a look back at previous installments, check out our lists from 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

2019 was a uniquely wild year for us, resulting in less available bandwidth for music discovery than we’ve had in the past. While previous installments have chronicled five of our most heavily-played albums of each calendar year, this time we’re going to be doing things a bit differently: here are five albums we play the hell out of in specific situations, in 2019 or whenever, in no particular order.

1. For a four-or-so-person dinner party: Van Morrison – Moondance [1970]

Small gatherings call for a specific flavor of sonic wallpaper – one that discreetly adds to the surrounding environment without making its presence too overtly apparent. It must never abruptly command the attention of the room, while still rewarding the occasional moment of acute awareness during a break in conversation. It must be warm, and timeless.

Van Morrison’s Moondance checks all of those boxes. It’s an album that finds mystical wonder in simple, relatable human experiences, and in turn communicates that sense of reverence in a deeply familiar musical language.

If you’re only going to listen to one song:  And It Stoned Me [4:32]

2. For late-night bedroom jams: Andrew Bayer – In My Last Life [2018]

For an artist normally associated with thumping trance sets at massive EDM festivals, the reserved sexiness of Andrew Bayer’s third studio album is all the more impressive. In My Last Life seamlessly integrates the smoothest elements of its influences – deep house, indietronica, and synthpop, among others – with breathy, ethereal contributions from an alternating pair of female vocalists. The result is a cohesive and euphoric tapestry that shines most brightly in dimly-lit surroundings.

If you’re only going to listen to one song:  Tidal Wave [8:17]

3. For an even-later-night wind-down: Lambchop – Mr. M [2012]

If you’ve reached the conclusion of an exhausting plot arc with just enough time left before sunrise, Lambchop’s Mr. M seems built for just this type of quiet, personal moment. “Sad” seems too clumsy and incomplete of a descriptor for an album that sounds like a compilation of sedated, end-of-life reflections, but Mr. M is a beautiful type of melancholy that never devolves into dreariness or self-pity. Soft, lounge piano, swirling string arrangements, and brushed snares conjure a sense of classic mid-century American tranquility, an illusion that stands in stark contrast to frontman Kurt Wagner’s weathered, whispering observations about the banalities of everyday life.

If you’re only going to listen to one song:  Gone Tomorrow [6:57]

4. For a harrowing descent into madness: Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz [2010]

Sufjan Stevens, a blank-faced indie-folk prodigy who many listeners had understandably pegged as a sensitive, intellectually quirky art-school type, begins his sixth album with a characteristically minimal acoustic ditty that seems to confirm those initial expectations. Once the quaint opener fades to black, however, The Age of Adz plunges headlong into its true form: a glitchy, sci-fi-laced dystopia that’s as dense and jarring as it’s conceptual source material, the apocalyptic visionary folk art of paranoid schizophrenic sign painter Royal Robertson. There’s plenty to dissect here amongst the alien landscape of asynchronous blips and cascading orchestral interludes, none of which will give you the warm fuzzies.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Vesuvius [5:28]

5. For a hazy Sunday morning remedy: OutKast – Aquemini [1998]

The gloriously eccentric combination of yin and yang that earned OutKast their unanimous recognition as the greatest hip-hop duo of all time is on full display on their seminal Aquemini, an album that chronicles the gritty realities of urban life just as adeptly as it indulges its creators’ most bizarro, funk-drenched eccentricities. The production features a colorful cast of collaborators and a sprawling inventory of live instrumentals, all delivered with a viscous, laid-back Southern flow. For those mornings where one’s head seems permanently affixed to the countertop, Aquemini is a sticky-icky hangover cure.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: SpottieOttieDopaliscious [7:06]

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Honorable Mentions: Our Individual Picks

Just as we’ve picked five albums for specific situations, our individual picks this year are albums / mixes that we love working to.

ASA’S PICK: Metallica’s First Three Albums [1983-1986]

Metallica is a band that 13-year-old me loved, 16-year-old me hated, 20-year-old me was completely ambivalent about, and 28-year-old me circled back and developed a deep respect for. Their genre-defining impact on the development of heavy metal is mostly the result of their first three albums, the earliest and most groundbreaking of which (Kill Em All, 1983) they recorded before the age of 20. While I’m admittedly not a huge fan of the rest of their catalog, the three-punch combo of Kill ‘Em All, Ride The Lightning (1984), and Master of Puppets (1986) is as much a museum piece of American musical history as it is a blood-pumping companion for manual labor.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: For Whom The Bell Tolls [5:09]

MATT’S PICK: Perseus – Soundspace MIX215 [2019]

Under the alias Perseus, DJ Leon Oziel and his label French Express returned early this year (after a long hiatus) with a new track and a special mix for Soundspace. The mix is an immersive experience, a slowly building arc of melodic techno that draws you in, lifts you up, and leaves you with a comforting glow from the journey you just took. Dance music will continuously evolve.  Sounds that are old feel new again as styles regain influence – and if downtempo, euphoric, trance-like vibes are where we’re headed, I’ll see you on the dance floor. 

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Lightwave [8:19]

BREWHOUSE PICK: Pile – Green and Gray [2019]

Boston’s DIY phenomenon Pile has been described at different times as post-punk, post-rock, art-rock, indie, noise-rock, post-hardcore, folk/americana – each are accurate to some degree, but never fully capturing Pile’s weirdness when listed individually. They continue to tour relentlessly, sleeping on floors even on the heels of their seventh full-length album, Green and Gray. It’s a politically-charged, personal, and self-reflective album, pensive and existential while maintaining a sly sense of humor about the increasingly complex and bizarre world we live in.

If you’re only going to listen to one song: Lord of Calendars [4:47]

The General’s New Look

The yet-to-be-officially-incorporated town of Braddock received its first brewery in 1865, just as the Civil War was drawing to a close and seven years before Andrew Carnegie built his Edgar Thomson Steel Works a mere few blocks away. A handful of small breweries came and went over the next half century until Prohibition wiped the industry off the map in 1920, yet only two breweries have called Braddock home since our disastrous “noble experiment” was repealed: the General Braddock Brewery, founded by father and son Dan and Art Rooney in 1933, and The Brew Gentlemen Beer Co., founded by two 23-year-olds from Boston, Massachusetts and Kona, Hawaii eight decades later.

For us, choosing Braddock was choosing to be part of its rich history – one of battlefields, Bessemer converters, and beer. When it came time to name our flagship product, paying homage to that history was a must. General Braddock’s IPA was thus born, taking a number of visual cues from the old General Braddock’s Brewery (with the Rooney family’s blessing): the horse and rider, (ostensibly representing the General himself), the crest with the rounded top, and the five-pointed star. And thus, we wound up with the imagery we’ve used in some form or another for the past five years:

Original General Braddock’s design, c. 2012

As we prepare to begin our company’s next chapter – one in which General Braddock’s will play a prominent role – our beloved flagship is receiving its first graphical update in seven years:

Updated General Braddock’s design, c. 2019

In designing the rebrand, we were operating with a much more developed visual identity for the brewery overall, not to mention several more years of design experience under our belts. We needed to bring General Braddock’s into the same visual universe as the rest of our company, while still drawing upon the same historical references that influenced the design of its predecessor.

The main quality we hoped to achieve with this new design is a sense of timelessness – after all, a beer you can always come back to needs to look the part. It was therefore influenced heavily by two things we felt were as timeless as they come: the crest as a visual motif, and historical monuments.

Crests, badges, and other ornamental borders have long been a part of the American brewing tradition, and the original mid-30s labels from the Rooney brewery were no different. Our intention was to update those graphics for a more modern era without sacrificing their nod to the past, a feat we found that European football club crests often accomplished well. Using the same color palette and flat design we’ve always employed, we adapted the crest from the original General Braddock Pilsener label to better suit its new context.

The somewhat lumpy 2012 rendition of the horse and rider felt direly in need of an upgrade, for which we looked to historical monuments, specifically equestrian statues. Even though the theory that the position of the horse’s legs denotes the fate of the rider doesn’t hold much water, we opted to follow that convention (partially for visual effect, and partially because why the hell not). Given that General Edward Braddock met his end four days after the Battle of the Monongahela due to wounds sustained in combat, one raised leg it is.

With the production and distribution of General Braddock’s slowly ramping up in anticipation of our current expansion, you’ll definitely be seeing more of The General’s new look.

Building a Bigger BG

This is part one of a three-part series on the story of our expansion. Now that we’re in the final stages of construction, we wanted to give a behind-the-scenes look at everything that’s gone into the project thus far. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for parts two and three.

PART ONE: DEFENSE RENT

The large cinderblock warehouse behind our brewery was a potential opportunity we’d had our eye on since we first arrived in Braddock in 2012 – its high ceilings, open floor plan, and close proximity to our existing space inspired visions of a much larger brewing facility, even at a point when our initial vision had yet to be realized. We weren’t trying to put the cart before the horse, but throughout the early years of our operation, the warehouse (occupied at the time by a biofuel company by the name of Greenlight Energy) remained an interesting hypothetical.

When a portion of the Greenlight warehouse came up for rent in the summer of 2016, we snapped it up and began using it as a much-needed storage solution. The rest of the building (and, in turn, the rest of the property) came up for rent a year later, and although we had no explicit plans in place at the time, we couldn’t risk a rather ideal next move being blocked by an outside party. Until the time came to expand, we needed to pay some defense rent.

With an el primo location acquired and a corresponding line item added to the monthly budget, the gates were open, and the pressure was on. We could now begin drawing blueprints, contacting equipment manufacturers, and seeking the capital we’d need to finance everything. A steady stream of floor plans and spreadsheets began whizzing between architects, engineers, loan officers, manufacturer reps, and our own team as we navigated a complex web of codes and constraints.

One such constraint caused a ripple effect of order-of-operations headaches and holdups: we were not permitted to use a design-build method. That is, although certain variables were impossible to know in advance and were liable to change at any time, we were required to have the entire plan finalized and stamped before we could so much as gas up a concrete saw. Unsurprisingly, multiple chicken-and-egg dilemmas ensued – information that could only be ascertained by reaching a certain point in a given process was often required in order to begin work on that very process. 

Frustratingly long periods of downtime alternated with bursts of frantic scrambling in a pattern that stretched on for nearly an entire year. Thanks to the convoluted entanglement of modern building codes, the demands were often either patently ridiculous or clearly unfeasible. For instance, the requisite number of bathrooms was initially determined based on square footage rather than number of occupants, forcing us to argue our case that a half-dozen or so employees have no need for fourteen separate bathrooms. The shot clock was ticking, yet the back-and-forths continued with no end in sight. Hell probably sucks, but at least it’s consistent. Purgatory is just depressing.

Our cautious optimism was restored in the early months of 2019 when the freshly-stamped plans finally arrived on our desks. After what felt like an eternity, the Greenlight project was officially greenlit.

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PART TWO: THE FINER POINTS OF FLATNESS ENGINEERING

It’s been said that a good floor is a brewery’s most valuable piece of equipment. Taking that into consideration, the construction timeline can be broadly separated into two phases – Phase One: Things That Involve Floors, and Phase Two: Everything Else.

The moment we were given the go-ahead, we attacked Phase One with a stockpile of pent-up vigor. We set to work carving out trenches for drainage plumbing, turning eight thousand square feet of existing concrete floor into a tidy maze of cliffs and canyons. The trench floors required an even fall from each branch of the system to where it met the main sewer line, giving us our first real taste of precision flatness engineering. In came the plumbers, laying down a seriously chunky tree of piping with vertical stalks projecting upwards where each fixture would eventually be located. The plumbing inspector gave it his blessing, and we backfilled the trenches with crushed limestone.

Thus began a multi-week demolition ballet, loudly converting the remaining floors from big rocks into little rocks. Truckload after truckload of rubble was carted off, leaving us with a warehouse-sized zen garden of loose earth and mill slag. Time to engineer some more flatness.

With elevation measurements set and each subsection graded to slope perfectly towards their respective drains, a vast grid of rebar and wire mesh was laid down and tied together. In addition to reinforcing the slabs, this grid provided a support structure on which to install the radiant heating system – the final piece of the puzzle before we could pour the floors.

Now, installing a radiant heating system in a nice, rectangular floor with a limited quantity of drains and fixtures seems like it’d be fairly straightforward. It’d probably look something like this:

Doesn’t seem too complicated. Lay the tube in a straight line along the rebar, zip-tie it down, loop it back around, repeat all of that a few times, and call it a day. 

Given all of the different pads and trench drains and rooms and fixtures and this one weird little peninsula thing we had to account for, however, our layout looked like this:

So there we were, during the most satanically hot week of the summer, fastening down a quarter mile of tube in accordance with the squiggly bastard above. In spite of the heat, the job presented us with a fun orienteering challenge, and boy, the results sure were satisfying.

We triple-checked our work and made sure everything was ready to be encased for eternity, and in late July, several cement trucks and a small horde of finishers descended on the warehouse and laid down six thousand square feet of gorgeous new concrete flooring. An exciting milestone had been reached, but we weren’t done yet.

The final step in the flooring saga involved covering the main areas of use with urethane cement, a specialized coating that none of us – including our good friend and resident concrete expert George – had any experience working with. This material, as we came to discover,  is part science fiction, part demon magic, and 100% pure evil.

The warning labels on the bag denote that its contents will a.) give you a crazy science burn, b.) startle the living shit out of you, and c.) open a dark cosmic vortex.

Three ingredients, each independently terrifying on their own (methylenediphelyn diisocyanate!), are mixed into a spiteful, gritty sludge that must be troweled onto the floor in a thin layer. It begins setting up in the mix bucket immediately, giving you a sparse few minutes before it becomes too rigid to work with. Even at its most malleable, it has the consistency of taffy and actively resists being spread thinly. After it’s put down, the surface must be smoothed out with a solvent-soaked paint roller. And in the unfortunate event that you get even the slightest bit of this vile goop on your skin, which is completely unavoidable, it’s best to just say a quick prayer and amputate.

Despite the strenuous application process, the juice was worth the squeeze. We were now the proud owners of radiant-heated, slip-resistant, chemical-resistant, antimicrobial, and damn-near-indestructible brewhouse floors.

Phase One was in the bag.

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PART THREE: ALL TOGETHER NOW

Somewhere between tearing up the floors and installing the radiant heating system, everything went a bit sideways.

It was late June, and we found ourselves driving sixteen hours through the night to Jackson, Mississippi. A lightly-used brewing system had just hit the market, comparable to the one we’d been in talks to purchase new from the manufacturer – but at a lower price and with zero lead time. There’s probably a sixteen-syllable German word to describe an incredibly lucky break that simultaneously causes one’s best-laid plans to be chucked straight out the window.

We spent the better part of a week in a hazy sprint to disassemble an entire brewery from top to bottom, with the help of a rigging team from Tennessee and the road crew from Sprinkman, the brewing equipment manufacturer in Wisconsin that built the system. A convoy of fifty-foot flatbed trucks laden with stainless steel made their way north to Pittsburgh.

Perhaps the most obvious sign that our timeline had been forcibly rearranged, the equipment arrived several weeks before its new home was ready to receive it. Our monumental acquisition would have to hang tight in the adjacent parking lot until a few more boxes had been checked. 

The walls were a journey all their own, requiring multiple long days of pressure washing to strip away the layers of paint, grime, and mill soot. A fresh coat of paint went up, the urethane topcoat from hell went down, and the brewhouse was finally ready to be set in place.

The pair of Sprinkman techs that worked with us in Jackson arrived to reassemble the gigantic Erector Set, piecing together a tangled highway system of pipes and fittings. Somewhere in the mix, we adopted a stray cat who found all of this commotion rather amusing.

And with that, dear reader, we’ve reached the home stretch of our adventure: outfitting the building with a circulatory system. We’re currently neck-deep in the complex process of installing plumbing, electrical, glycol, steam, and gas lines alongside a talented group of tradesmen. On a project of this scale, fifty percent of the work is crammed into the final ten percent of the timeline – but for the first time since we began this process over two years ago, the finish line is now in sight.

Love Your (Our!) Library

Partially because it’s Love Your Library Month (and we love our local library) and partially because we’d like to eat a small mountain of soft pretzels, we’re throwing Septemberfest: a geographically nonspecific celebration of fall beer and food, benefiting the Braddock Carnegie Library.

Faithful newsletter recipients have undoubtedly heard many an ode to our local library, a historic landmark founded in 1889 by Andrew Carnegie that is now a multifunctional community center. The library recently unveiled its plan for a massive $15 million renovation project to expand their programming (including the screen printing and ceramics studios) and revive many of the sprawling architectural compound’s long-defunct facilities (such as a gymnasium and a 900-seat theater hall).

Providing a helpful boost to this ambitious endeavor is Love Your Library Month, a fundraising push led by the Allegheny County Library Association wherein all donations through the month of September will be matched by the Jack Buncher Foundation. Last year’s campaign raised a total of $810,000 for the county’s libraries, including the Braddock Carnegie Library.

Because donations during Love Your Library Month will have so much extra mileage, we figured that September was as good a time as ever to help out. And with plenty of other opportunities out there for oompah bands and lederhosen, we’re celebrating the current month rather than the next one with Septemberfest. Library staff will be in attendance to facilitate a variety of activities, and a portion of the proceeds will go directly back to their ongoing work.

We rounded up a number of food vendors too, including Gaucho, Driftwood Oven, Gyros N’at, Piebird, and dueling pretzel bakers (Axel’s Pretzels and the Braddock Community Oven) – all to the tunes of our vinyl-spinning resident DJ Sunkist Smith.

Septemberfest takes place on Saturday, September 21st from 4pm to 10pm at BG Open Air, our new outdoor space, and the alleyway behind our main taproom. BG Open Air is a former vacant lot that’s been transformed into a custom-fabricated outdoor space featuring $5 beers. The main taproom will also be open during the event.

All are welcome. RSVP at the event page on Facebook – where we will post updates, parking info, the beer schedule, and other event information.

Septemberfest: The Details

Septemberfest is just around the corner this Saturday, and we’ve got a number of friends joining us for a fall evening of beer, food, and of course, pretzels. Here’s the lineup: FOOD Grilled meats and veggies from Gaucho Asado Wagon Greek and American fare from Gyros N’at Wood-fired pizzas from Driftwood Oven Sweet and savory pies from Piebird Soft pretzels from Axel’s Pretzels and the Braddock Community Oven BEER Draft beer available inside the taproom, outside at the main bar in BG Open Air, and at a beer tent in the east courtyard. Tabs may be transferred between any of the bars. $5 drafts in BG Open Air (General Braddock’s, 2 Rotating Selections and Arsenal Cider). Growler fills are are available in the taproom, but not at either of the outdoor bars. Growlers are for offsite consumption only. Cash and card are accepted at all bars. Fall seasonals (Mexican Coffee, Kabuto, Kanso) will be available on draft and in growlers to go. View our full draft list in live time on our website. FUN Ping-pong and cornhole Try your hand with a pile of clay at the ceramics tent Print tote bags and postcards at the DIY silkscreen station Sign up for a library card Use your library card to enter a raffle to win a Braddock Library Experience DJ Sunkist Smith spinning chill tunes on vinyl ATMOSPHERE Consumption of outside alcohol is not permitted. This includes bottles and cans from other breweries and growlers from our taproom. Smoking/vaping are permitted in the alley outside the gates, but not in the space. Groups and families are welcome – seating is on a first-come basis. As much as we love furry pals, we anticipate a large crowd and suggest not bringing dogs along for the party. WHEN: Saturday, September 21st, 2019 from 4pm – 10pm WHERE: Brew Gentlemen – 512 Braddock Ave., Braddock PA 15104 The event will take place in BG Open Air, our new outdoor space, and the alleyway behind our main taproom. The taproom will also be open from 12pm to 11pm. All are welcome – stay in the loop by joining the event page on Facebook, where we will post updates, parking info, the beer schedule, and other event information.

The Quarterly Update: Q3 2019

This week, our co-founder and CEO Matt Katase drops by to deliver a situation report on the state of Brew Gentlemen as we work through quarter three of 2019.

There are an infinite number of ways to run a brewery. A constant stream of new players entering the industry add to that diverse list of methods, and it’s both fascinating and insightful to observe how businesses that are older, younger, and similar in age to our own evolve with the times.

As you may have heard, we’re currently in the midst of a major construction project, and things are now moving at breakneck speed. Decisions have to be made on site almost immediately. During a project of this scale, many moving parts must be brought together in harmony.

To this point, our values of simplicity, continuous improvement, elegance, and an eagerness to learn have become all the more applicable during this quarter. These ideas steer us away from repeating our mistakes, rushing, cutting corners, and being shortsighted as we experience growth. They make us feel better when the power washer is still running at 1am or when we push the concrete pour back a few days to give us some extra breathing room.

Through all the surrounding chaos, leaning on our values helps us to stay on track, course-correct with ease, and navigate to our long term destination: building a brewery that can thrive for years to come.

Two organizations that have understood and supported this long-term goal are the major financiers of the project. We’re incredibly proud to have Huntington Bank and Allegheny County Economic Development as crucial partners in our expansion.

Huntington Bank is the largest originator of SBA loans in the nation. They believe small businesses are the lifeblood of communities and have led the charge in access to capital for over a decade. The team in Western PA have been incredible mentors in navigating the world of banks and government lending.

The mission of Allegheny County Economic Development is to effectively coordinate community and economic development initiatives and activities to maintain and enhance the economic, social, and environmental quality of life for all citizens of Allegheny County. They have been a critical link in the revitalization of our community in Braddock – they are invested in the long haul and know that rebuilding is not an overnight process. We’ve had the pleasure to work with former Director Bob Hurley, current Director Lance Chimka, and project manager Dan Tobin, who have all spent countless hours on the project.

This process involves many partners, including but not limited to, neighboring Braddock businesses, contractors, architects, and borough officials. A special shout out goes to LGA Partners, Gaydos Construction, Mele Mechanical, Molyneaux Electric, JB O’Connor, Gray Welding, PER, Deb Brown and her team at the Braddock borough office, the Braddock Water Authority, and Braddock Mayor Chardae Jones. Projects like this take a village, and we’re excited that so many of the necessary participants are right here in our own backyard.

Construction progress in the new production facility means we’re close to having more beer, for more of you, in a more convenient way.

See you at Garden Party,
Matt

ICYMI: How big is our brewhouse? + Q1 Update

Equipment Acquired

If you’ve visited our brewery at any point over the last few months, you’ve probably seen the early rumblings of a sizeable construction project: large piles of limestone sitting in our parking lot, heavy machinery coming and going, and the melodic sound of jackhammers on concrete.

While we’ve told you about our upcoming expansion, one piece of information we haven’t yet divulged is the size and scale of the project. Now that we’ve got a conspicuous quantity of brewing equipment sitting outside of our building, it’s high time we share what’s been going on.

Growth is expensive, plain and simple. Doing it correctly, with the long term in mind, is even more so. We have to be pragmatic, and invest in the things we believe contribute to a culture of quality, smart design, attention to detail, and being a great place to work and visit. Constant decisions must be made to find a balance between our standards and our budget.

Following the advice we’ve received from friends in the industry and learning from the headaches we’ve experienced over the past five years in our current space, top-notch floors and ceilings are non-negotiables for this project. This means a new roof, a new wastewater plumbing system, radiant heating, and new concrete floors with the appropriate slope and coating. These things certainly aren’t cheap, so how are we making it work?

Well, we’ve purchased a used brewing system. Pretty much an entire brewery, really.

We spent the past week in Jackson, Mississippi decommissioning a brewery that had recently gone out of business, loading everything onto a series of tractor trailers, and hauling it back to Pittsburgh. We’re now the proud owners of a two-vessel, 20bbl brewing system made by W.M. Sprinkman, along with four 40bbl fermenters, two 20bbl fermenters, and all of the requisite support equipment.

The system is damn near perfect: it’s American-made, under five years old, and designed with growth in mind. To top it off, Sprinkman is lending their full support to help us recommission the new system. Finding equipment that’s functionally identical to the system we were looking to purchase new was a serious case of right place, right time.

Getting everything reassembled and operational will take some time, but when all is said and done, we’ll finally be able to share more beer with more people – a goal that’s been years in the making. It’s going to be a wild summer.

Five Places to BYOGB

With our fifth anniversary just around the corner, we’ll be taking the month of May to share collections of five things that have made their mark on our past, present, and future. This week: five places to BYOGB around Pittsburgh.

Given our limited amount of distribution to local bars and restaurants (a situation we’ll be duly remedying through our upcoming expansion), there is a select list of places you can find Brew Gentlemen beer around Pittsburgh. But, dear reader, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a General Braddock’s alongside some of the best meals in the city – it just means that sometimes, you just need to Bring Your Own General Braddock’s (BYOGB!).

1. Chengdu Gourmet

Whenever we have friends visiting from out of town, we subscribe to a preset group of activities that has come to officially be known as “Playing the Hits”. Towards the top of our list of said Hits is a trip to Chengdu Gourmet, the venerable Szechuan restaurant nestled at the bottom of Squirrel Hill. It’s best enjoyed in groups so as to accommodate a wide range of dishes. Based on the level of heat that some of our favorites pack – a product feature that ranges from extreme at its most merciful to borderline psychedelic at its most potent* – a meal here is best enjoyed with a General Braddock’s in hand.

Our picks: Diced Chicken w/ Dried Pepper Chongqing-Style, Pork w/ Sweet Flour Paste, Mapo Tofu, Beef in Hot Broth Chongqing-Style, Green Beans w/ Minced Pork, Cold Cucumber Salad

2. Piccolo Forno

In a neighborhood that’s been a revolving door of bars and restaurants, Lawrenceville’s Piccolo Forno stalwartly remains. The well-loved Tuscan restaurant has been churning out handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, and focaccia panini for over fourteen years, with elegant and uncomplicated recipes utilizing fresh, high-quality ingredients. The atmosphere is equally warm and inviting.

Our picks: Pappardelle con Coniglio e Funghi, Molto Stracco Pizza, Lasagna Toscana

3. Noodlehead

Noodlehead clearly revels in its unapologetic simplicity. There’s no phone, they don’t take reservations, they’re cash-only, and they’ll only seat you if everyone in your party is present. But their modus operandi is completely justified: the menu is concise and consistent, turnaround is quick, and the food is marvelous. Their selection of Thai noodle dishes and soups are rich and flavorful, begging to be paired with a hop-forward beer.

Our picks: Chiang Mai Curry, Pad See Yew, Love Boat Soup

4. Gaucho Parrilla Argentina

There’s a reason that Gaucho has held the highest Yelp rating of any restaurant in Pittsburgh. People tend to like places where the team is both dominant at their craft and are having a shitload of fun while they’re at it. This powerhouse of Argentinian food does exactly that, with perfectly executed dishes and a supremely relaxed feel to the space. Bring along a General Braddock’s, and don’t skimp on the chimichurri.

Some of our favorites: Anything involving steak, Rosemary Braised Beef Sandwich, Qui Qui Chicky

5. Nak Won Garden

Authentic Korean food in Pittsburgh exists in the form of Nak Won Garden. Located on Centre Ave right next to the Shadyside Giant Eagle, you’ve likely driven right past it numerous times without ever realizing it was there. Their extensive menu features noodles, soups, stews, and grilled meats – all served with an array of tasty banchan (side dishes). Sure, you could always drink soju, but GB fits the bill, especially with their galbi. 

Our picks: Mandoo, Beef Soondubu, Japchae, Galbi

*Potentially resulting in a condition known as “Chengdoom”.