New brewery Necromancer Brewing Company is set to open in March 2021 in the North Hills of Pittsburgh.

The brewery is the project of owner Ben Butler with his business partner Aaron Easler. The two recently settled on 2257 Babcock Boulevard in the Ross neighborhood of Pittsburgh, after looking for months for a site around the North Hills. Butler founded Top Hat, a Pittsburgh-based branding, design, and marketing agency, and Easler is a creative director and partner at the agency as well.

Top Hat has a history of working with the beer industry, and this motivated the two to start their own brewery. Butler went through the Cicerone program and noticed many “dead styles”. This prompted him to research further into history and to bring them back.

Beer fans may see a familiar face in their head brewer, Lauren Hughes. She was most recently the assistant head brewer at Penn Brewery when we last interviewed her. Read about her experience here.

The first question we wanted to get answered: “How was the name Necromancer decided on?”. As Ben explained, “Resurrection beers are gateway beers to show beer fans and educate them on what else is out there”. Necromancy is the act of resurrecting dead things. He continued to explain that it fits perfectly with the theme of the brewery to resurrect old recipes for beer styles that haven’t been made in a long time or aren’t currently popular.

Below you can see our conversation with Butler and head brewer Lauren Hughes:

BIPA: What stage are you currently in?

Ben Butler: We are currently working on our licensing with the state and local as well to get permits. We are about to begin construction in January, with the goal to be producing beer in cans by March 2021.

BIPA: What breweries have had you back and helped you on your journey?

Ben Butler: We have had tremendous support from Dancing Gnome, Allegheny City, and Pittsburgh Brewing. We can’t thank them enough for answering our questions and helping us in our journey.

BIPA: What styles of beers will you focus on?

Lauren Hughes: We will have a mix of everything. There will be three categories that we will brew beer in – “Trends” (think hazy IPAs and fruited sours), “Familiars” (think pilsners), and “Resurrections” for styles that we are bringing back.

There will be 4 core beers to start: NE IPA, Belgian Wit, Grissette, and then our Kentucky Common – “Square Dancing”.

Our goal is to bring both sides of the beer spectrum together. Let’s have people who like beers that are super hopped up all the way to people who enjoy malt forward “macro” beers. We want to expose people to new beers and educate beer fans along the way.

BIPA: Can you describe the space you are opening? Is there a history of the building, what did it used to be?

Ben Butler: The building we have now is a 14,400 sq/ft warehouse which used to be a “USA Baby” warehouse, built back in 2003, then a Halloween store. The entire building is concrete all the way through, it was meant to be a brewery!

“Sometimes it’s not the size, but sometimes it is.”

We will be operating in a Pandemic first business model, which means we will not have a taproom for a while, just the production space. It’s a working plan, and we will open day one with cans.

Lauren Hughes: We have roughly 5,000 sq/ft for the production space which will house the 3.5bbl Alpha system we bought, and also four 3.5 bbl fermenters and two 7 bbl fermenters. In the future, the goal is to move to a bigger system.

BIPA: Anything else our readers should know about the Necromancer?

Ben Butler: Lauren is deep in research new styles and trying different things out. We will be sticking to the standard guidelines for certain beers. We are also setting our mission with a vision of why we are existing, and what our differentiator is. Producing styles beer fans will know and some they’ve never heard of, we aim to be very educational as well. And finally, our high level of quality and perfection will always be there.

To keep up with their progress, follow Necromancer on Facebook and Instagram, and signup for their email list on their website. Also, keep an eye out for their upcoming collaboration announcements.