So, taking advantage of Henry’s first day of school, on Tuesday Kylene played hooky and the four of us ventured down to the Strip District and Lawrenceville in Pittsburgh’s East End. We to-go’ed at Allegheny Coffee and Tea (👍), then did the same at Enrico Biscotti (👎), and strolled up Penn Ave past the S&D Polish Market and Penn Ave Fish Company. Had an informative chat with the owner of the latter about shipping in fish daily from the entire Atlantic seaboard. Amazing stuff.

We poked our noses in Mullaney’s Harp And Fiddle, the Sea Monkey Mediterranean restaurant, and Coop De Ville, which really intrigued us. Their pitch: Cocktails & comfort food served in a funky restaurant featuring arcade games, bowling & billiards. Sounds kinda fun. We continued down Smallman Street to the car, then motored further east to Lawrenceville, where we poked around a few shops on Butler before settling in for lunch at Industry Public House.  Along with our flight of thirst-quenching brews, Nancy and I shared two salads: Salmon and Kale with green apples, goat cheese, blackberries, and a caper vinaigrette; and watermelon with mint. Both gangbusters good. I also wolfed down a cup of Catalyst Chili with ground beef, their Velvet Yeti Stout, jalapenos, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and some crispy tortilla strips. We then walked off our lunch, glancing into a few more shops, until Kylene and Cory had to pack things up to return home and pick up Henry from school.

Our end goal destination was the highly-touted The Church Brew Works, but we still had an hour to kill before their 4 o’clock opening, so continued our window shopping with a stop at the William Penn Tavern - a sports-driven dive bar, where I Googled some history on the abandoned and condemned Iron City Brewing building we’d walked past earlier. In a nutshell, Iron City began brewing beer in 1861, moved operations to this 160yo building on Liberty Avenue five years later, then merged with 21 other breweries to become Pittsburgh Brewing Company in 1899, with Iron City Beer and IC Light being their flagship beers. The building was PBC’s HQ until 2009, when they relocated their operations to Creighton, PA, and the brick behemoth fell into disrepair and was condemned a few years ago. The other pre-1865 founding fathers of American beer are all quite familiar to me - Yuengling, Pabst, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, August Schell, Hamm's, and Leinenkugel's - but not Iron City. Cool random happenstance.

Okay, but then came The Church. Oh Lordy, what a treat. First off . . . it’s a real honest to God church!! The former St. John the Baptist Catholic Church built in the early 19th century. With a soaring 68-foot high vaulted ceiling with hand-painted cypress, an altar apse (featuring steel and copper brewing kettle, mash tun, and fermentation tanks), an organ loft, and gorgeous stained-glass windows. We wandered around for a bit in whispered conversation, lest any random nuns glance us the stink eye. We settled in at the bar with six gleaming 15-barrel bright tanks watching over us and ordered a taster flight and some potato and cheese pierogies with sautéed onions, melted butter, and sour cream. Not as good as Nancy makes, but pretty gosh darn good. And then we shared the spinach, smoked gouda, & feta dip with scoopy naan chips. One of our beers was of a style called steinbier in which white hot 800°F stones are dropped in the brew kettle to boil the wort. For this Asteroid Ale those “stones” were actually meteorites! Watch how the brewer did it here. And a great way to see the interior of The Church is to click here, then full screen view the image, follow the arrows and the Step Inside, then enjoy the 3D experience.

Not quite ready to call it a day, we thousand-stepped to Eleventh Hour Brewing, where we shared a 4-beer taster flight and a couple of small, but satisfying hotdogs. The beers were exceptionally good: 2 IPA’s, one of them Hazy, a Norwegian Farmhouse Ale, and a coffee Milk Stout. And the temperatures had dropped, so we indulged on a picnic table on their spacious streetside patio. A relatively quick $20 Uber brought us home.

Tomorrow will be our big day in Sewickley. See that post here.

We'll be in touch.