Coming soon to the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh will be the future home of Trace Brewing. The brewery is currently still under construction, but they plan to open for business in September 2020.

Located at 4312 Main Street, at a very busy intersection in Bloomfield; which sees a lot of car and pedestrian traffic. The building has been used for many purposes, most recently a concert and event venue (See more on the space below).

The brewery is a project between Dave Kushner, Brandon McCarthy, Zach Colton, and Katie Rado. All four combined have an extensive amount of brewery and taproom experience. We recently spoke with them to get the details on how they formed Trace Brewing, the space they are building out, and what beer fans can expect when they open their doors.

Dave Kushner – Owner/Founder

Dave got his start working at a local brewpub in Boston, where he helped as a server and assistant brewer. From there he would go on to brew at Harpoon Brewery (Boston, MA) and Lord Hobo Brewing Company (Woburn, MA). He is also the owner of Remnant Brewing in Boston.

Brandon McCarthy – Head Brewer

Brandon started brewing at Pittsburgh local Church Brew Works, then shortly after moved on to Rock Bottom as an assistant brewer for 4 years and Head Brewer for 5 years (at both their Pittsburgh and Richmond locations). From there, he would go on to Cinderlands for the past year and a half, working with head brewer Paul Schneider and helping with the expansion of the Foederhouse location.

Zach Colton – Head of “Funk”

Zach Colton is the Head of Funk, heading up Trace’s Koelschip and barrel program for wild and spontaneous fermentation. Zach has worked with beer in many different jobs and fell in love with brewing at Harpoon. He competed in a home-brewing competition at Harpoon, made an IPL, and came in 2nd place. A beer that Harpoon would end up eventually producing on their commercial brew system. Zach also has experience working with Trillium, Dancing Gnome, as well as holding an internship overseas with Mikkeller Baghaven. His experience also includes working at Four Points Brewing, and most recently at Strange Roots brewing.

Katie Rado

Katie Rado is the GM of Trace Brewing and responsible for all front-of-house management. She most recently worked at Spirit Lodge in Lawrenceville. She has extensive event planning experience and will be responsible for the wide range of events at Trace Brewing. She has also previously owned a butcher shop in Pittsburgh; Butcher on Butler.

Now on to our Q&A with Trace

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

Trace: There are a few breweries locally that have helped quite a bit: Cinderlands and Strange Roots.

BIPA: How can the community support you?

Trace: We will be soon be selling merchandise on our website, so look out for the store. For now, we would love for people to follow us on social media as we post the brewery progress, and to reach out with any questions.

BIPA: What styles of beers will Trace focus on?

Trace: We will have a mix of styles so everyone can find something they like. We want to stay away from “gimmicky” but will explore and experiment with a lot. And of course, our wild ale and barrel-aging program will be big. We have 16 taps and are built for flexibility. But we will probably have 7-12 beers on tap to start.

BIPA: Describe the space you are opening.

Trace: The building we are renovating is 5,800 sq/ft, and was built in 1900. It sits across the street from a former large Iron City Brewing facility in Bloomfield. The history of the space is interesting: it was a brass and bronze foundry, then a paint manufacturer, and then a photography location. Most recently it was used as an underground punk music venue until 2016.

The brewery will utilize a 10bbl electric fire Stout system, with 20 bbls tanks. We will have 5 fermenters and 5 brite-tanks we will serve directly out of. For the funk program, we will have two 10bbl Foeders, and a barrel wall in the taproom room for 40 wine or bourbon barrels. The Koelschip itself will have its own room off the beer garden, and be public-facing for all to see what we are doing.. This is so we can use the Koelschip in both traditional and non-traditional ways as an open fermented. 

We can have about 195 people inside, with our open concept, putting people in the brewery space with a half wall able to see the brewers. At that half wall, we will have about 20-25 high top seats there. We want to open up the brewing world to everyone, so people can ask questions and interact with our brewers on the process, as well as to provide a workspace and meeting space.

Did we mention we will have a coffee shop open all day in the space too? We want people to come in at any time during the day to hang out and watch us brew. The full coffee shop will source coffee from local roaster Red Hawk and will make both hot, cold, and nitro. The brewery will not have a restaurant or kitchen, but our plan is to work with local vendors on the coffee side for pastries in the morning. We want to have some bar snacks, premade sandwiches, and of course many food trucks from the amazing food scene in Pittsburgh.

Because of the connection to the music industry, we will of course have live music! There is space indoor and outdoor that will be set up for all types of live entertainment (bands, acoustic, stand up comedy), to bring people to gather on a nightly basis for public and private events.

BIPA: Will you release crowlers/cans there as well?

Trace: We will do a limited amount of canning, and have the occasional can releases. We will have crowlers, bottles of the wild ales, as well as can conditioned saisons.

BIPA: Will the brewery be dog or kid-friendly?

Trace: We will be both dog and kid-friendly.

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

Trace: We will be running a rotating 6-month brewer vocational training program, and on January 1st, 2021 we will take our first candidate, and people can start applying now. There is no experience needed to apply, just a love for beer. We want to bring people into the industry who do not typically have access or haven’t been exposed to it (women, people of color, LGBTQ+). We want it to be known that the program is open to everyone.

The goal by end of the program is to have someone who walked in with no professional brewing experience, leave as a competent/safety-focused, member of the brewing community. We want to give them the tools to begin a career in the industry. We have a curriculum designed for the program already, based on books, podcasts, websites, practical skills, etc.

Click here to apply to the Trace vocational training program.

For more information on Trace Brewing, check out their website and also their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!