Small breweries take advantage of liquor laws to create 'Pennsylvania Loophole' beer

Small breweries, like so many other businesses, have been hit hard by the health and safety restrictions of the covid-19 pandemic.

Those who don’t have the means of selling their beer beyond pints and growlers are in an especially difficult position.

“We’re just a small, family-owned brewery with a two-barrel system,” said Jeff Bloom of Bloom Brew in West Newton. “In late March, I’d been saving money to do some canning.”

Bloom owns a small bench-top canner, but it requires a lot of work, and the labor costs eat into profit, he said.

The alternative is doing a large-scale run of canning. For many small brewers, that’s simply not financially feasible.

“We have a 10-barrel brew house, and we use a mobile canning service that comes in to a can a certain amount for us,” said Jason Ufema, manager at Shy Bear Brewing in Lewistown. “To really make it economically feasible, you have to do about 20 barrels of beer at one time.”

But East End Brewing Co. in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood has come up with a way to help out those small breweries. It takes advantage of a loophole in the state’s labyrinthine system of liquor laws.

East End is producing and canning “Pennsylvania Loophole” as a collaboration beer. It’s created in cooperation with Shy Bear, Bloom Brew, Spring Hill and 12 other Pennsylvania brewers, who all discussed and settled on a recipe. After signing the requisite legal agreements, all collaborating brewery names will appear on the can, which allows them to sell six-packs to go at their breweries.

For a young, destination brewery like Shy Bear that only launched a little over two years ago, it’s a chance to start up a revenue stream normally not available to them.

“The group of brewers in Pennsylvania that get together are all really forward-thinking in their ideas,” Ufema said. “They’re all emblematic of the humanistic side of brewing.”

Grant Saylor, co-owner at Lincoln Avenue Brewery in Bellevue, agreed.

“There’s certainly a culture of all boats rising,” Saylor said. “There’s a lot of collaborative effort, not just on things like this but on other ideas to get people out and keep the craft beer scene moving forward.”

A few years ago, small breweries were granted permission for on-premises sales of any alcohol produced in the state, “but people couldn’t get it as takeout,” Bloom said. “The collaboration loophole addresses that.”

East End founder Scott Smith formed the loophole idea during conversations with fellow brewer John Frampton of Boxcar Brew Works in DuBois.

“I had been talking with John about what we could do to help, and together we came up with a great way for smaller operations out there to be able to sell some cans,” Smith said.

Pennsylvania Loophole is a 7.2% ABV New England-style hazy India pale ale, brewed with Idaho7 and Galaxy hops.

The brew has started as a one-time offering. Smith thinks it could return.

“Given the strong response we’ve seen from breweries looking to collaborate on this first round, another batch with a brand new recipe, maybe with some new collaborators, sure seems likely,” he said.

It is expected to be available for sale starting in mid-September at any of the collaborating breweries. The complete list is at eastendbrewing.com/news.