East End Brewing Company

East End Brewing has been going since 2004, which makes Scott Smith something close to the dean of Pittsburgh craft brewing, and the Larimer brewpub at 147 Julius Street has been its home since 2013. There are two other sites — a Mt Lebanon taproom and a seasonal pop-up garden in the Chateau neighbourhood — but Julius Street is the one with the pizza oven. The food is a rotating Pizza of the Week that changes every Wednesday, with dips, salads, pretzels, breadsticks and soups around it. Smith's own account of what the place turned into is the most honest thing any brewery owner has said about the last decade: he used to think they were a beer company, and while they are, they are a community gathering place that has beer that they make. His read on why people are drinking less is equally direct — habits have changed, and it is a pushback against the alcohol arms race that was going on at one time. People are not going out for beers; they are going out to do something and maybe having some beers.

The brewery makes its own non-alcoholic beer, Dry Hop, built after its flagship Big Hop — which, for accuracy, the brewery itself labels an American Ale rather than an IPA. Alongside it the taproom pours hop water, non-alcoholic seltzers, and Barmy Soda, a separate small company started by East End's own head brewer, which is the sort of thing that only happens in a brewery that takes its soft drinks seriously. Two honest caveats. Dry Hop does not appear on East End's published beer list and no ABV for it is printed anywhere we could find, so ask whether it is 0.0% or 0.5% if the distinction matters to you. And the food menu is published as a photograph rather than text, so it cannot be read in advance. One piece of context worth knowing about every Pennsylvania brewery on this site: state law bars any business holding a liquor licence from selling hemp products, so unlike breweries in many other states, you will not find THC seltzers sitting next to the non-alcoholic beer here.