This is about the East End Brewing Company in Pittsburgh. The URL is www.eastendbrewing.com.

I went to a tasting yesterday and spoke to owner/brewer Scott Smith. Scott is brewing and selling his ales by keg only.
He does not bottle his ales and he doesn't have a retail outlet, like a brewpub, to sell them. Others might have heard
of a brewing business model like this, but it's new to me.

Scott told me that he is a one man operation. He got a warehouse to brew in for cheap rent and he bought his equipment
from the Foundry Brewpub, which had closed (I was told at the tasting that the Foundry bought it from Meander Brewing in
Morgan, OH when they closed), and he did the installation by himself, which took a year. Scott said that the margin is
highest on beer served draft in a brewpub and next highest in bottles. His model, selling kegs to bars, has the lowest
margin. I asked him why he didn't open a brewpub and he said that he didn't know the restaurant business and that's
where brewpubs succeed or fail. He said that he also didn't want to need to brew 5 beers including a lager which would
be a Bud knockoff and an amber which would be a little darker and still taste like Bud. He has gotten 20 or so bars in
Pittsburgh to carry his IPA and being a local brewery is a good selling point. It's too soon to see how many will
reorder, but I gather it has been moving well at beer geek bars. He said he fears running out of product which could
sink as surely as not selling would.

I tasted his second ale, the blackstrap stout. It was quite hoppy for a stout, to be compared to Victory's Storm King.
He isn't registered to sell it yet. What's interesting is that he said a new beer has to be registered with both the
state (Pennsylvania's notorious Liquor Control Board) and the federal government, and the state process is much easier
than the federal process.

Tom W