Welcome to our “Meet The Brewer” series! Where we interview brewers in Pennsylvania, from breweries small to large. Let us know if you know anyone who should be featured, email us at [email protected].
Burgh’ers Brewing was added in 2017 to Burgh’ers restaurant which has been operating isnce 2010. Burgh’ers now operates locations in the western PA towns of Lawrenceville and Zelienople. Neil Glausier is the head brewer at Burgh’ers Brewing, read more to find out how he was introduced to craft beer, where he sees the craft beer industry heading, and more!
What was your introduction to craft beer?
Honestly, I was drinking at Red Lobster in Hattiesburg, MS in the mid 90’s with some restaurant work pals. I was feeling an adventurous departure from my usual Bud Heavy or super sophisticated Heineken bottles and grabbed the frosty mongo mug of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale draft on happy hour and got my head spun from the flavor of hops.
How did you get started as a brewer?
I like to joke around and say it was because my wife cut off the $100 a week hemorrhage from the budget on beer I was spending, but really it was curiosity. I’m an engineer and tinkerer and love making things that I am interested in. Beer was no different, and the making of brewery equipment to make the beer was a major plus to the home brewing hobby. I traveled while working as a field engineer for a research company nearly 160 days a year, so time was very scarce and brewery progress was slow. I decided to start with all grain brewing rather than extract kits on the stove, so equipment construction and accumulation was slow too. I was reading, researching, and learning like a madman during this time though, and knew that just brewing the beer was only half the process. Fermentation and conditioning are what makes an okay brewed beer an even more okay’er tasting beer, so I would also have to design and construct a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. That became a 5 tap kegerator unit also modeled after a buddy’s setup. Now with a brewery and tap system I was ready to roll after about 3 years of tinkering on the buildout. Simultaneously, around this time, I had blown out my ankle and had to have a major tendon replacement surgery that would put me down for several months unable to walk. This led to me “working from home” and of course strictly following my recovery instructions, I renovated the former coal cellar, storage room in our house to be a fully functional brewery and taproom.
I started making basement beer and loving it, so I made a lot and shared it all. Eventually, I ended up in Harmony, PA at Fiore Moletz’s (who is now my business partner) Italian restaurant where they were having a crawfish boil one chilly, rainy afternoon. My wife and I (from LA and MS respectively) not being able to resist exploring a little town outside of the city where we lived for a crawfish boil, made the trek up there with some homebrew and shine. Where we’re from you don’t show up to a party empty-handed! We hit it off with Fiore and his wife Michelle and offered some very “subtle” help with the boil technique and became fast friends. Fast forward a couple years and this guy is wanting to open another Burgh’ers concept restaurant in Lawrenceville but getting punished by the PLCB bureaucracy and decides to investigate the brewery licence route. I got a call to help with some brewery consultation and advice and I was happy to help with some simple process and engineering stuff while bored at my 9-5 job. Next thing I knew I was sleeping in the bed of my truck in this space I had designed trying to build a brewery and maintain a career as a test engineer! A few months of that shit was all it took to realize that one of my vocations had to go. I did what any responsible adult does and gave the finger to the man and left my corporate bondage! Of course with the acceptance of my wife that we would be losing a significant income only for me to work like a crazy person on a small business partnership with no guarantee of success.
The hits kept coming with the Lawrenceville restaurant buildout and cashflow was decimated with many unforeseen setbacks with that new building and we didn’t have much at all left to buy brewing equipment. So I scoured every digital junkyard, nook and cranny to buy, barter and build our equipment. I had a stroke of luck while searching Probrewer listings and found a complete 3bbl brewery, priced right and local! It was Hitchhiker’s Mt. Lebo brewery they were getting rid of during their expansion. This was perfect! We grabbed up that stuff and motored it up to the new brewery space and I immediately got to work like B.A. Baracus’ and Murdock’s love child (insert A-Team theme music here) putting together our production plant. We were finally a brewery, I just had to make some beer.
TL;DR – Home brewing
What style allows you to be the most creative, and why?
The easy answer is IPA of course because of all the diversity of ingredients and directions of style one can go, but I think lagers in general, European Lagers especially really make you think and test the complete brewmaster’s skillset in a way that leaves very little room for error and exemplify mastery or failure at the concept of technical brewing. That’s not to say that IPAs are shit simple or anything, but they have a much greater margin for error in the recipe and process factors while the flavor and sensory gradient is much more forgiving in that style.
What was the first beer you ever brewed, and what did you learn from it?
Belgian Dubbel. I learned that I had successfully built a home brewery from scratch, and that my attention to detail had paid off. It wasn’t the best, by far, beer I would ever make, but it proved the concept and was good enough to keep chasing the dragon. We brew an updated version of that beer now at Burgh’ers called “Archabbey.” That revised version, I believe, is a very good beer and a very good example of the style.
Where do you see the craft beer industry heading in the next few years?
I see ever increasing quality leading the way forward and gimmick beers sunsetting. Diabetes in a can has had a very proud moment, but lots of folks are gravitating to lighter fare. Hopefully the balance will swing back to beer flavored beer where the discussion returns to quality of liquid, not labeling and lines.
Describe what it’s like to be a brewer in Pennsylvania.
Well, it can seem a little crowded at times, but that makes for some really great options for experiences. Overall, we’re each other’s business competitor but we all seemingly get along here locally, anyway. We have a really generous group here in Pittsburgh and we all seem to abide by the unspoken but well understood rule to not shit on each other. There is a ton of brewing knowledge and experience here and I haven’ t run into anyone trying to be stingy with it. I think we’re better for it and the overall beer scene is better for that ethos. There is a wealth of good beer in this city that covers the style and taste spectrum fantastically.
What is the inspiration behind your beer names?
Pittsburgh and Western PA culture and history. We’re Burgh’ers, we’re proud of our city and surrounding communities and we want to put that on display while sprinkling in just a tad of education. Lookup key words in my beer names, you’ll learn something. There’s a lesson in every pint, there’s nothing really random about my naming convention. I love that nerdy shit.
What is your favorite beer to drink right now?
It’s a toss between my “Dark Half” Czech Dark Lager and my “Flying Off The Bridge” NEIPA. Waaaay opposite ends of the spectrum, but I’m loving them both right now. My daily crusher I go to is always that crispy yellow stuff though, and that’s the “1890 Lager.”
What is the most important lesson you learned in the beer industry so far?
I can’t make every beer for me. I’m a beer curmudgeon and not everyone else is. I might have to drop a little fruit and spice in a beer, I may have to make a style I think is bullshit. It’s all about the details though, the little things are the big lessons.
Thank you to Neil for talking with us! Make sure you visit Burgh’ers Brewing for all the latest beers, news, information and special events. And also follow Burgh’ers Brewing on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!
