There is a distinct scent in the air when walking through the Carbondale Technology Transfer Center these days.
"That's the smell of beer," Johnny "The Beard" Waering explained recently as he led the way through the business incubator building to where he and three friends are turning a hobby into a potentially career-changing business.
Waering of Carbondale, along with brewmaster Matt Zuk of Greenfield Twp. and brewers Dave Oakley of Carbondale and Jon Bronson of Richmondale, make up the team behind 3 Guys & a Beer'd Brewing Co. LLC.
"This started as a hobby, but now it's a passion," Waering said.
Before setting up the company, the group home-brewed for several years, letting friends try their recipes. When they told their friends and family members they were starting their own brewery, Waering said, "I don't know if they really believed us. (But) they fully supported us no matter what happened."
"I think it really hit them when we filled out the paperwork" to start the brewery, Zuk said. After several years of submitting government forms and receiving the necessary approvals, 3 Guys & A Beer'd received its license in November.
"We hit the ground running at that point," Bronson said.
The brewery set up in the transfer center on Enterprise Drive, started brewing in December and was allowed to start selling beer Jan. 1. The group believes 3 Guys & a Beer'd is the first brewery to open in Carbondale since Prohibition, a fact Carbondale Historical Society executive director S. Robert Powell confirmed.
Several local restaurants and bars, including Backyard Ale House in Scranton, Manhattan Manor in Carbondale and Chico's Lounge in Mayfield, among others, already have snapped up some of the brewery's kegs. Local businesses "were so happy there was another local brewery," Waering said.
"It was great to know the people liked it, the bartenders liked it," Bronson said.
Two beers — the American wheat "Wheat the People" and a rye India pale ale called "Ladder Dive," named after a bone-breaking fall Bronson took — are available now, but the brewery plans to add more throughout the year. The list of potential additions includes an Irish red for St. Patrick's Day, a blueberry ale and a chocolate porter.
The recipes are the brewers' own, and creating new styles involves research, test batches and tasting sessions.
"We all have an idea of how we want a beer to end up," Zuk said.
Waering has organized beer tastings for years - one even raised $7,000 to fight breast cancer - and holding tastings of their own products helped the group test their recipes on friends. The others let them know which recipes they liked, even offering suggestions for beer names, and the group decided to brew and sell the wheat beer after seeing its popularity at tastings.
"At all our tastings, the wheat beer is the first one that goes," Zuk said.
Being a small brewery has benefits. Trying new recipes can be easier for a brewery of their size than it might be for a larger company, the group said, and they can make a lot of different beers in a short amount of time.
"We're allowed to experiment more," Zuk said.
The brewery also uses high-quality grains, Bronson said, and barley instead of rice, which some bigger beer companies use. Barley gives the drink a better taste, he said, and people use all their senses when drinking their beers.
"The smaller the operation, the more you can focus on the quality and what goes into it," Oakley said.
And they are trying to help the community while building their business. The brewery has used local sources, from supplies for the brewery to the graphic designer who created the logo to the sign maker who made the banner.
"We want to be able to create more jobs and give back to the community," Waering said.
They hope the brewery one day becomes successful enough that they can make running it their main job, but in the meantime they all have other jobs as well. They split the brewing work among themselves, with each stopping by the brewery at different times throughout the day.
"We're doing our best right now trying to balance our family life and our work life with being here," Waering said.
Making beer is "a process, but it's not taxing work," Bronson said. "We have fun while we do it."
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Information from: The Times-Tribune, http://thetimes-tribune.com/
