I was looking for some diversion on a recent Sunday afternoon when I remembered the Indy Film Fest. I checked the schedule and saw that, within an hour of my reading about it, a movie about craft beer brewing that featured two young men from Braddock, Penn., would be showing at the Toby Theater, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Braddock is near Pittsburgh and beer is near and dear to my heart, so I leapt into my chariot and hied to the IMA. On the way into the theater, I sent a text message to my friend’s husband. I had attended art school in Pittsburgh with his bride, and asked him, “Is Frances from Braddock?”
“Blood, Sweat and Beer,” a documentary filmed by Alexis Irvin and Chip Hiden, chronicles the challenges faced by craft beer brewers in general and features the growing pains of two small brewers. Shorebilly Brewing was started by Danny Robinson in Ocean City, Maryland, and The Brew Gentleman Brewery was the brainchild of two young men who met in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University. Asa Foster and Matt Katase launched their brewery in the broken and blasted town of Braddock, a place they saw as “half beauty, half opportunity.” Alexis and Chip, who spoke to the audience after the showing that I attended, wrapped the documentary with statistics about the foothold that craft brewing has taken in this country and statements from craft brewers about the “blood, sweat and tears” that go into the industry.
In April of this year, my niece invited me to come to see her in Denver, Colorado. She is a fan of craft beer brewing, and the beer thus produced, and she took me to the cities and towns that I was later to see featured in the documentary. We drank beer from Sweetwater Brewing in Boulder, and Crazy Mountain (which started in Vail) in Denver. (We also drank Bonafide Renegade in her friends’ back yard, but that brewery was not in the film.) When the Colorado breweries were mentioned in the film, I wanted to stand and shout, “I’ve been there!”
The 11:30 a.m. showing of the film in The Toby was sparsely attended, but judging from the questions asked and answered, those who showed were fans of both film and beer. What interested me the most, however, was the story of two 23-year-old men, their 22-year-old head brewer, and their “barely-legal” brewery. The filmmakers trace the growing pains from joy, to “it got dark,” to the opening of the The Brew Gentlemen Beer Company. The revitalization of a decimated steel town is hinted at as the young brewers open their enterprise with the strong support of the mayor of Braddock, John Fetterman. I left the theater happy to have found the film, to have learned more about the art and craft of brewing beer, and the youngsters who are doing it so well, in Braddock, Penn.
Outside the theater, I checked my phone for messages. I had sent a text saying that I was going to see a film about two young brewers in Braddock, and received this reply from my friend, Frances: “I was in that place yesterday!” While visiting her hometown of North Braddock she and her husband went to Braddock Avenue to eat. A food truck was selling gyros across the street from The Brew Gentlemen.
In a perfect collision between film, friendship and memory, I learned of a place that was green and growing near my hometown and remembered that my classmate lived near there and found that she had visited the brewery.
I lived a good day, that Sunday.