We're Opening a Brewery! The Independent Proudly Announces Golden Age Beer Company

Friends:

With great pleasure, we’d like to share with you our latest project.  Over the last six months, we’ve quietly been working on our biggest expansion to date, a brewery. And now, with our first beer ready to go (and with a second not far behind it), it’s our pleasure to introduce you to Golden Age Beer Company.  And this Friday, our first beer, Golden Age Pale Ale, will go on tap at both the Independent and Lorelei.

Golden Age is located in Homestead, a community whose resilience and rebirth we have admired for years from just across the Monongahela River, and a community that we hope to join and support by creating jobs, opening an inclusive and accessible space, and maintaining and repurposing a beautiful historic property.  Golden Age will take the place of the former Enix Brewing, which closed in 2019.  Our predecessors in this space took a huge risk, and created a space with strong and beautiful bones.  They graciously left us in a tremendous starting position, and we are thankful for their help and support in transitioning the space and the brewhouse to us.

We will be reopening that space soon, not just with a different name, but with a different concept.  As faithful supporters of Lorelei and the Independent well know, our passion in recent years has taken a deeper focus on lager in all of its glorious forms.  From crisp Northern German and fragrant Italian-style pilsners to luxurious dunkels and Franconian rauchbiers to the easy-drinking, “lawn-mower-beer” American lagers, we believe that, with their clean, subtle and eminently-drinkable finesse, lagers are the beers that bring people together, that cross divides, and that are both the past and the future of beer.  We want to bring a brewery that makes lager its primary focus to Pittsburgh and more particularly, to Homestead.  Indeed, we believe that to do anything else would be an injustice to this community’s hard-working, steely heritage and resolve.  When this community rose up in 1892 to rebuff a barge full of armed Pinkertons, it was fueled by Homestead-brewed lager, while the very brewers who crafted that lager stood in solidarity with their steel-worker brethren on the banks of the Monongahela.  We hope that we can stand in solidarity with this community once more as it continues on its path to a new golden age.

Our brewhouse is well-equipped to produce the finest lagers.  We are fortunate to have inherited a state-of-the-art 15 barrel BrauKon brewing system.  Bavarian-made and designed to manufacture the world’s most precise beer styles, this system will provide our brewing team with the tools it needs to walk the tightrope to make perfect lager, which is defined nearly as much by its absence of imperfections as it is by its pursuit of perfection.  In what feels like a meeting driven by fate itself, we were fortunate to find a head brewer who is up to the challenge of working with a system that has a lofty reputation for precision and finesse.

Head Brewer Aaron Dahl joined us in August to oversee the transition of the brewhouse and begin working on recipe development.  Aaron joins us from Chicago’s Alarmist Brewing, where, over the last six years, he has been the head brewer.  He is too modest to champion his own accomplishments, but we will not spare them in our introduction.  In the past several years, Aaron has earned three medals in the Great American Beer Festival:  in 2018, the Gold Medal in the Hazy IPA category for “Le Jus;” in 2020, the Bronze Medal for the Pale Ale category for “Pantsless Pale Ale;” and, in 2021, the Bronze Medal in the American Lager category for “Midwest Royalty.” He has dedicated his professional life to beer.  And while he can produce some of the best IPAs and pale ales in the country, over the past several years, his passion -- like ours -- has turned towards lagers, and he is excited to join us in a brewhouse that is dedicated to and designed for the same passion.  

Hop heads, fear not -- this brewery will not exclude you (or anyone), and, indeed our inaugural batch of beer was a Pale Ale.  While our draft list offerings will ultimately be lager-forward, we’ll always have an IPA or a Pale Ale on tap.  Moreover, with Aaron’s well-demonstrated acumen in brewing those styles behind us, we assure you that it will be a good one.  And for those of you who love the Independent, Hidden Harbor, and Lorelei for our cocktails, we want you to know that we will cater to your tastes too.  Along with the brewery, we also acquired a full restaurant liquor license, allowing us to serve the entire world of spirits, wines and cocktails (and also any beers from international, in-state or out-of-state breweries that we admire and think would compliment our lager focus).  There was one person in town that we believed had the “triple-threat” ability to run such an ambitious bar program, and that was Jamie Lesh.  Many of you will remember Jamie from behind the bar at Hidden Harbor.  He also has been regularly behind the stick at the Independent, where he served as our interim head bartender while he awaited the opening of Golden Age.  And, in between, he worked with our good friends at Cinderlands Brewing in the Strip. He will now work as our Bar Manager at Golden Age, where we believe he is uniquely positioned to run a tap room cocktail program that will not simply be an afterthought.  

Similarly, Maddie Burton, who has served for the last six months as our General Manager on Shady Avenue, curating wines for the Independent as well as Lorelei, will put together a wine program that will focus on wines that derive from the same European traditions and philosophies as the beers that we intend to brew.  Maddie also intends to select wines with similar production techniques as beer, and you can expect to see wines that complement our draft list and that will serve as gateways to wine for the stalwart beer drinker and beer for the stalwart wine drinker.

So when will Golden Age open its tap room?  As we complete some interior renovations, you can expect to see us open outdoors in our adjacent beer garden on a limited, weekend pop-up basis soon.  The beer garden has ample seating and a stage, and we hope to bring some fire pits and music to the neighborhood in the waning weeks of autumn.  To stay up to date on those specific dates and hours, please follow our Instagram page where we will announce them.  In the meantime, Golden Age beers are going to start hitting the draft lists at the Independent and Lorelei, starting this Friday with Golden Age Pale Ale, an all-Citra hopped -- and crystal clear -- 5.2% abv American Pale Ale designed to be an instant, quaffable classic and frequent instalment on both draft lists.  

For those of you more excited by our dedication to lager styles (which, by their very nature, will take a little bit longer for us to turn around), stay tuned, because we will be releasing our first Kölsch-style beer soon.  Our first true lagers -- including our first Pilsner -- will likely wait until we open our tap room. 

Finally, why the name?  Well, we started the Independent Brewing Company nearly eight years ago, with a terrible, terrible name.  As we quickly learned, a name that includes “Brewing Company” for a place that does not in fact brew beer is a confusing one, no matter how viable our tedious metaphor to a long-extinct, similarly-conceived company with the same name was.  So now, you may be wondering, why have we refused the unique (one may say “golden”) opportunity to cure that original sin, having recently acquired a fully-operational brewery just across the river in Homestead?

We considered using the “Independent Brewing Company” for the brewery.  That opportunity felt even more appealing as the aforementioned Homestead brewery that served lager during the “Battle of Homestead” was actually a member of the original Independent Brewing Company association of breweries.  But fundamentally, the Independent and all of the emotion and passion and feeling that we have all put into it as owners, employees and guests alike needs to be its own thing in its own place.  Golden Age beers will of course be well represented there.  But so will beers from our friends at Roundabout, Old Thunder, Grist House, East End, Dancing Gnome, Cinderlands, Brew Gentlemen and so many other local friends and favorites (as well as, naturally, beers from our national and international friends at places like O.E.C., Einbecker, Reissdorf, B.F.M., and Allagash).

The name “Golden Age” felt right to us for a number of reasons.  It’s a description that has the unique ability to celebrate the past, enjoy the present, and look towards the future.  We believe that the Golden Ages of Homestead, of lager, of craft beer, and of Pittsburgh are not behind us but indeed remain ahead of us, as we strive for a more sustainable and inclusive culture and economy.  And we believe the same for our company and for the food and beverage industries at large.  After a difficult year for our restaurants, Adam, Matt and I shared a dedication to emerging with something more -- something that would make it all worth it.  It helped us maintain our resilience in our darkest hours.  We believe that this brewery can help usher in a badly-needed Golden Age for our staff and our communities, and we have humbly set out to try to realize that dream. 

With love,

Pete

Sacrifices Made in Vain: Governor Wolf is Prematurely Loosening COVID-19 Restrictions on Pennsylvania Restaurants

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to an exhausted nation from the Pennsylvania battlefield where it saw its bloodiest single conflict.  As the Civil War continued to ravage the nation, he distilled into ten perfect sentences why the Union, faced with so much suffering and death, must bolster its resolve to finish the war to honor the memory of those who had died.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ...”

Two weeks ago, Governor Wolf announced that on April 4, Easter Sunday, he would take steps to relax restrictions on indoor gatherings and restaurants, most notably allowing restaurants to resume bar service and to increase to 75% indoor capacity.  In a press release, the Governor’s office justified this easing of restrictions, stating that “COVID-19 cases have declined and vaccination rates are climbing.”

The loosening of these restrictions is premature.  It will cause Pennsylvania to suffer a higher death toll than it would if we kept restrictions in place a little longer. It threatens to undo the promise of our vaccines, which may not be as effective against rapidly spreading variants.  Finally, it threatens to render moot the sacrifices we all made in the last year, as we maintained social distancing to buy our scientists time to develop those vaccines.  As cases begin to rise again both nationally and in Pennsylvania, and as we watch a fourth wave of COVID-19 sweep across Europe with too-little-too-late lockdowns once more in its wake, now is the time for Governor Wolf to reconsider his order and to put the health of Pennsylvanians before the demands of businesses.

I understand the urge to want this to be over.  At our restaurants, we want to reopen our dining rooms and bars again too, and we even believe that we can safely do so soon.  But next week is objectively and abjectly too soon.  

While the perception that the pace of the vaccinations has accelerated is correct, the roll out is not keeping pace with the similarly accelerating spread of the virus.  Worse yet, if we don’t get things under control soon, the vaccines may lose the ability to get ahead of the pace of the virus’ more easily transmissible variants.  Loosening restrictions now with the hope that the increasing number of vaccinations will be enough to prevent an exponential increase in new cases is a lot like bungee jumping from a bridge without measuring the length of your cord.  If you’re going to take the leap, you better be sure that the bungee will stop your fall before you hit the ground.  With unanswered questions regarding how quickly we can achieve herd immunity and regarding the efficacy of the vaccinations on the variants, we can’t know how effective our vaccination strategy actually is, and we shouldn’t use it as an excuse to lower our other defenses until we do.

Moreover, the grim reality is that, while the pace of vaccinations is improving, we are still far from having enough needles in arms to see the effects of herd immunity.  According to data compiled by the New York Times, only 30% of Pennsylvanians have had one shot, with a mere 15% having been fully vaccinated.  And if your argument is that the most vulnerable have already been vaccinated, allowing the rest of us to take our chances, please know that, in Allegheny County, only 39% of residents over 65 are fully vaccinated.  The truth is that while there’s good reason for optimism, we’re just not there yet, folks.  And we won’t be there by April 4th either.  

And then there are the inequities of our vaccination roll out and the impact on those who must bear them.  That Governor Wolf would open restaurants and bars before their workers have been made fully eligible for a vaccination (and without their having be given a reasonable period of time to actually get one) is unconscionable.  That the white and wealthy are getting vaccinated more quickly than more vulnerable socioeconomic groups is deeply unjust.  That we would allow the many of those vulnerable persons who also work in the service industry to return to work in indoor dining to cater to the needs of the wealthier without first ensuring their opportunity to get vaccinated is abhorrent.  And even if we could fix those inequities today, April 4th would still be too soon to open.  If every restaurant worker could get their first shot this afternoon, they will not be fully vaccinated for another 5-6 weeks (3 to 4 weeks to get dose two of Pfizer or Moderna, and two weeks after dose two to gain the full effects of immunization).  I would ask Governor Wolf to agree that, at an absolute minimum, the workforce of restaurants should not be caused to bear the high risks posed by indoor dining without having themselves first been fully vaccinated.  He ought to revisit the effective date of his order and choose a date in accordance with that principle.

I’m not saying that we can never open indoor restaurants and bars again.  At the Independent, we absolutely intend to open our own at some point this summer.  Nor am I suggesting that we have to wait for Coronavirus to be completely eradicated before we can dine safely indoors.  It is more and more likely that eradication is a goal that will never be attained.  But with the help of vaccines and testing, we can control it, and we can and will go back to normal lives (and, yes, that includes sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, without masks at a bar).  

But the job isn’t done for us quite yet, just like it wasn’t done for the Union in November of 1863.  And, just like the Union, if we give up prematurely, we run the risk of allowing our own dead to have died in vain.  We owe it to ourselves to see this struggle through.  We owe it to the sons and daughters who went a year without seeing their parents, some of whom they would never see again. We owe it to the grandparents who went a year without hugging their grandchildren.  We owe it to the doctors, nurses, and first responders who risked or gave their lives to help the sick.  Mostly, we owe it to the more than 548,000 Americans who have died from this terrible virus (a number that is coming frighteningly close to the 620,000 Americans who perished in the Civil War).  We owe it to their memories to resolve that we will last a few more months until we can reopen bars and restaurants safely and in good conscience. 

It's Long Past Time to End Indoor Dining at Restaurants and Breweries

As cases of COVID-19 surge here and around the country, we feel that, as a restaurant, we have a moral obligation to say this as loudly and clearly as we can.

Do not dine indoors at a restaurant. Period.

Indoor seating areas at restaurants, breweries, and bars remain the hottest spots for transmission of COVID-19. This fact -- and it is a fact -- has been established by countless contact tracing surveys, by cell phone data, and by experiments while being explained by the too-long delayed acceptance of airborne transmission of the virus. In Allegheny County, the peak age range of new cases falls in the core demographic for restaurant patrons -- not students and not among older members of our community -- but among those between the ages of 25 and 49. Further, it is no coincidence that cases have risen in the wake of Governor Wolf allowing restaurants to resume indoor dining at 50% capacity and as the colder weather has driven eager patrons to choose indoor options. We are spreading this scourge of a disease indoors and at restaurants. And unlike colleges, where outbreaks have an opportunity to be controlled within a comparatively small and contained community, restaurants bring people in from all over a city, from many different social circles, and they send them out into the world to become the next set of vectors for transmission.

State and local officials, having already shut down restaurants once, believe that their hands are tied. Restaurant associations around the country are fighting for their member restaurants' lives in their lobbying efforts. State governments, with budgets that have already been shattered, are staring staggering losses in tax revenue and have no funds available to provide relief to the small businesses that the next shutdown will destroy. The Trump administration is hell bent on staying on the sidelines. Congress has no foreseeable hopes for a stimulus while it stays there. And the incoming Biden administration can't act until January, and even then, presuming the senate is Republican, it's unclear to what extent or how quickly it can act to provide stimulus relief.

In short, the cavalry isn't coming for any of us. For small restaurants and bars that have managed to survive so far, we're facing mass-extinction with the next shutdown. For our community at large, we're facing hospitalizations and deaths in unfathomable numbers without a shutdown. Nothing but hard roads lie before us. And there is no one at the wheel -- or at least no one who can afford the gas to get us to the end of the road.

But hope isn't lost. There is always hope. As playwright Tony Kushner once said, "hope isn't a choice, it's a moral obligation, a human obligation..."

There is hope for us, friends. But it requires us to make choices and decisions to help each other. It requires bars and restaurants to get creative, to push the limits of take-out and outdoor dining, and to reinvent themselves and their spaces once more. And it requires you to support the ones that do. It requires you to make choices to support those of us who are doing the right thing -- not because we legally have to do it, but because we know that we are morally obligated to.

In happier days, legendary New Orleans bartender, Chris McMillian once told me over his bar, in his beautiful Louisiana drawl, that "we vote with our dollars. I've had a craving for late night chicken on [insert French Quarter street here] but I won't go to [insert overrated fried chicken place here] because they don't care about their staff and they don't care about their guests. I'll go vote somewhere that does."

Chris's words are more impactful now, during this ruthless pandemic, than ever before. We know that indoor dining is incredibly dangerous. It's awful. Don't support people who do it.

Instead support the folks who are making commitments to take-out and outdoor-only dining. Support the places that keep reinventing themselves to survive in a way that doesn't participate in this scourge. Roundabout Brewery never reopened its tap room for indoor seating in the heart of busy Lawrenceville -- go visit them in their outdoor only beer garden on the Ohio River or buy cans at their brewery. Dancing Gnome invested in the lot behind it and chose to close its tap room entirely but for to-go sales. Apteka in Lawrenceville has transformed into a wine shop and does food pick up on Fridays and Saturdays. East End Brewing Company sells and delivers their cans and only allows guests on their patio. Bar Marco does take-out meals twice a week. And of course our very own Lorelei offers an outdoor-only, tented beer garden in the parking spots in front of it as well as a robust take-out menu of brats, dogs, flatbreads and more.

Follow Chris's lead. Vote with your dollars, friends. Support those businesses who are making incredibly hard choices to support their community and their staff right now. Bundle up and sit outside. Get take-out or delivery from restaurants who offer their own delivery service. Avoid ordering through big third-party corporations like Grubhub or Doordash that exploit the restaurants and their drivers. Super-spreader events and locations don't just impact the people who were at them; they can kill strangers who were miles away. You can help restaurants and breweries without having to sit inside of them.

For our part, we want to use our spaces in creative ways that will help you do that. We waited for the election to be over to tell you about it, but last Monday we opened up the IBC's Beer, Wine & Cocktail Emporium. We've learned a lot from the early days of the virus, including that retail can be done safely with occupancy limits and masks. So we've created a warm and cozy (but ventilated) shop for you to check out our beers, our wines, and our bottled cocktails in person, and where you can be warm when you're picking up your online order. We limit the number of guests to four people at a time, and we make sure we're keeping surfaces clean. In the coming weeks, we'll be adding more of our own (and Hidden Harbor's) merchandise as you gear up for the holiday season.

And, of course, we still offer delivery as well as contact-free curbside pick up (please note that we can't deliver wine or cocktails, which are only available for pick up). As you have been able to do since the beginning of our shutdown, you can order online in advance, or call us at 412-422-5040 to talk to one of the same dedicated employees that you’ve known since long before this hellish era to place an order.

We also remain dedicated to offering as much outdoor seating as we can if you are willing to brave the cooler temperatures. If you make a reservation, we can guarantee you a heat lamp. But, with the warm nip of rum, whiskey or barrel-aged beer and with the sweats only a spicy chicken sandwich or a fresh-off-the-grill burger can give you, I can tell you that if you come bundled up, you might not even need one.

Finally, we're trying to use as much daytime as we have left to create safe opportunities for you to enjoy a meal and a few drinks with friends outdoors. On Sunday, November 22, we're holding another Sunday event with our good friends at Blowfish BBQ, called the "Thanks-Tiki Luau." Blowfish will be providing smoked turkey pastrami, and smoked mac & cheese, while our kitchen serves some traditional Thanksgiving sides with tropical spins. The full menu and a link for reservations (or tickets for our new event take-out option) can be found here.

Friends, we're all in this together. Now, more than ever, we can make a difference. We can make good choices ourselves even if we're not legally mandated to make them. We can tell our friends and family how they can do the same. We can spread the word. We don't have to give up on friends or on restaurants. But we can't meet them inside of one. We have to get behind the wheel ourselves if no one else will drive for us.

With love,

Pete

Want Chips with That? The Target Shifts Yet Again for Pennsylvania Restaurants

Yesterday, Governor Tom Wolf announced yet another modification of the terms by which restaurants and “bars” (more on those quotation marks in a minute) can operate under his “green” phase (I think that you can probably figure out the meaning behind those quotation marks). In addition to limiting indoor dining to 25% occupancy (great, but why not make it zero at this point?) and limiting indoor private events to a mere 25 people (wait, THAT’S still legal!?!), the order once again heroically targets the true villains of COVID-19, alcohol drinkers! Specifically, the order (the full text of which can be found here) states: “Alcohol only can be served for on-premises consumption when in the same transaction as a meal.”

If you are scouring the text of the full order to find the definitions of “meal” and “transaction” either before or after the ad damnum clause, I’ll save you the time — they’re not there.

Now, look: as it pertains to what we do, this modification doesn’t change much — we’re already firmly committed to outdoor-only eating and drinking. It’s just now, if you are going to join us for a drink, you’ll also have to get something to eat. Hopefully that won’t be too difficult, because we have great food and most of you already order something to eat when you join us anyways.

But there’s a bit of a “principle of the matter” issue here. And, lest you interpret my dripping contempt as an ill-conceived “don’t-tread-on-me” rant or think that we are lobbying for the ability to act irresponsibly, let me explain why this order misses the mark so badly and, more importantly, why missing the mark is so damn dangerous right now.

First, and most importantly, when a new regulation is so vaguely drafted that its loopholes or workarounds are more obvious than its intended prohibitions, it immediately becomes subject to abuse and impossible to enforce. What is a “meal?” When the order came down yesterday afternoon, one of our staff members aptly pointed out that we should invest in Utz stock, as the sale of bagged potato chips was about to go through the roof. Another wryly cried “the chips will stop the disease!” Their point is well taken. A “meal” will be a performative gesture in many establishments — something non-liquid and small that contains some amount of calories that is added to the tab so that a place can sell drinks. And the ambiguity of the word “transaction” will make it even easier to evade the presumed intent of this order. Does everyone at the table count in a “transaction?” So, if one person gets a “meal,” and pays the tab for a group of four, have we satisfied the meal and transaction requirement for the entire group? What if they order food to go but have a few drinks while they’re waiting? The food was part of that “transaction,” right? Frankly, based on the plain language of the order, I would argue that both of those situations satisfy the conditions of the law. But, other than helping us sell more food (thanks, Gov!) what have we really accomplished to mitigate the spread of COVID-19?

Second, let’s talk about the word “bars.” It’s trendy governance in the United States to blame the heinous surge of COVID-19 cases on “bars.” Forget the fact that federal, state, and local governments have been and remain embarrassingly behind on testing and contact tracing — it’s the bars! But, while the word “bar” may have some legal definition in many states, it does not in Pennsylvania. Food and beverage establishments do not choose to license as a “bar” or a “restaurant.” Instead, what you may colloquially consider to be a “bar” is almost certainly licensed as a “restaurant license” or a “hotel license” (or increasingly as a brewery, distillery, winery or storage facility). Ultimately Governor Wolf’s order applies the same restrictions to “bars” and “restaurants,” but beginning the order by restricting “bars,” a legal fiction in this Commonwealth, is telling. Who is he writing the order for? Certainly not Pennsylvanian enforcement agencies who scratched their heads when they saw the word “bar.” Perhaps, then, he is writing for a different audience. The headline of “Pennsylvania cracks down on bars” certainly fits the same narrative that other governors who opened their states too quickly are crafting for their own political cover. And Pennsylvania’s surge is even more embarrassing for a democrat who can’t help but boast in every press conference of his achievements in reopening Pennsylvania’s economy while keeping the virus in decline. If Wolf’s intention is to out-Cuomo Cuomo, he should know that Cuomo is not easily out Cuomoed. And now isn’t the time to waste time crafting policies that do very little but provide personal political cover.

And there are many other fine points that will put us and our staff in a weird spot. I doubt that Governor Wolf has ever worked in a restaurant, but if he had, he would realize that most people sit down, order a drink, and look at the menu. He would also realize that there are some people who will scan the menu, not find anything to their liking, and leave after their first drink. Can we let them? Must we chain them to their chair until they take a bite of food?

If you are at this point wondering why I have devoted another of my tireless screeds to denouncing a policy that is easily avoidable and doesn’t really change much of what we do, here’s why this all matters and why we personally care: enforcement. If we have any chance of avoiding another complete shut down, all establishments need to maintain safety protocols. The rules mean absolutely nothing if we don’t bother making people follow them. And we haven’t been.

Since July 1, the PLCB reportedly has investigated 6500 complaints of licensees. They issued 98 warnings and not a single citation. And I don’t blame them. The laws aren’t particularly artful. Moreover even the most jaded State Trooper certainly has a soft spot in her heart for struggling small businesses, and no one wants to be bring the final hammer down on a mom & pop that has been absolutely decimated by our flailing and incoherent response to COVID-19.

The addition of odder, vaguer, and more arbitrary rules will not ameliorate our enforcement issues. It will make them worse. We will force the food and beverage industry to jump through another set of hoops, to reset its aim once again on a constantly moving target, and it will cause more of us to fail. All the while, we never even bothered to enforce the first, most important, and really straight-forward requirement — occupancy (it’s easy — you, like, count the number of people in a place).

Governor Wolf, if you want to out-Cuomo Cuomo, you need smarter, stronger policies — not political performance art, which is exactly what this order is — and you need to enforce the reasonable policies you already have. If you want to keep Pennsylvania in the poorly-named “green” phase, the intellectually honest path forward is not to keep changing what it means to be green. It’s following your own plan and constantly monitoring the reproductive rate of the virus, then moving appropriate counties back to yellow or red when the virus is spreading from one person to more than one person (i.e., to use epidemiologist speak, when the R0 is above 1.0). It’s testing the hell out of your population, and quickly containing infected people and exposed people through lightning fast contact tracing (perhaps, we could temporarily use our alcohol tax contributions to fund more testing and contact tracing in Allegheny County).

That approach is the one the Germans are taking. It works. They had 276 new cases yesterday in a country of 80 Million people. Allegheny County added 246 new cases in a county of 1.2 Million people.

And in Germany, you can walk into any bar, restaurant, biergarten or bierhalle, and have a beer (if you want some bratwurst, that’s your decision).

Regarding Allegheny County’s Order Banning Outdoor Drinking at Restaurants

Friends:

When I last wrote on this forum, I was pleased to announce that we had decided not to reopen our dining rooms and indoor seating this summer, but were excited to pursue a safe, responsible, adult alternative of outdoor drinking and dining. I provided our reasoning for both of those decisions here.

In the intervening week, cases — as we worried that they would — increased considerably and worryingly so. When I wrote to you on June 23, our ten day average of new cases per day was 15.5. After this weekend’s announcement of 90 and 96 new cases on Saturday and Sunday, and today’s announcement of 83 new cases, our average over the last seven days since my email has been 62 new cases per day. That is a dramatic and statistically significant increase. Immediate action had to be taken. And the County was right in that it needed to do something quickly.

Yesterday, Allegheny County Chief Executive Fitzgerald and the Allegheny County Health Department decided that the way to curb the surge of cases was to ban the consumption of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption — both indoors and outdoors. Their reasoning was based on their noting of strong trends that the recent new cases appear to have been infected in bars on the South Side and in Oakland.

The County’s move is, of course, understandable. However, it’s based on the false premise that alcohol is the culprit in the transmission, and ignores the fundamental problem: that the bars where cases were transmitted were violating occupancy limits, offered indoor seating, disregarded the use of masks and catered to a younger party crowd. Their executive order, however, targeted everyone who consumed or served alcohol at a restaurant, including the many of you who responsibly joined us for the last two weeks on our patio in a safe, respectful, and well-managed environment.

If your position is “look, Pete, they’re doing their best and we had to stop the jagoffs somehow,” I get that. But let me explain why I (and the people who work here and have gone to tremendous lengths to keep themselves, each other, and you healthy) are upset by that reasoning.

Clear, targeted, and precise policy counts even more in emergency times. In focusing on and addressing what the actual causes of a problem are, good policy not only addresses that problem, but serves a dual purpose of educating the public on the nature of the problem. The problems that appear to have contributed to the current surge of cases are four fold: indoor environments, a disregard for occupancy limitations, a disregard for masking, and, yes, alcohol abuse.

The policy to ban all drinking at responsible restaurants — including outdoor consumption — at best only addresses the last of these issues.

Regarding indoor environments and masking, the County’s policy doesn’t address this issue at all, allowing restaurants to continue serving food in indoor establishments so long as it is without liquor. So, large venues like the Cheesecake Factory, Applebees, etc. can continue to operate at half their indoor capacity, seating large family tables, and we can continue to rely on their (rightfully) scared, undertrained and underpaid servers and managers to enforce the County’s heightened masking policy. Great…

Regarding occupancy limitations, the banning of alcohol similarly doesn’t address this issue at all. We’ve already limited occupancy at bars. You have to be six feet away from anyone you didn’t come there with. No one followed it. The County and City apparently didn’t enforce it. Restricting the number of people in any given place at any given time is — by consensus — our best way of mitigating the spread of COVID. Why did we leap by the enforcement of that rule before imposing a restriction on a substance whose consumption does not, in the absence of other factors, contribute to the spread of COVID (hell, if you drink rum the strength that I do, it’ll kill it)?

Finally, regarding alcohol, the County is right — intoxication lowers inhibitions. It makes most us social little butterflies, and for the true monsters of the world, it makes them raging assholes. We know — they’re the people you saw us kicking out of our places after we identified them. However, there are several reasons that banning on premises consumption doesn’t really address the fundamental problem of alcohol abuse.

For one, the same jagoffs that were dumb enough to get hammered on the South Side and in Oakland are already planning their epic house party (bruh!) and how this COVID shit is all so stupid. The Green Phase (which, by the way, we’re still in) allows gatherings of up to 250 people. We have solved … nothing.

Additionally, there are more reasonably tailored ways to address the core issues here: a collection of alcoholics, drunks bros and bro-ettes getting hammered and carrying on in establishments that don’t give a flying fuck and want to make as much money as they can while they can. First, going back to occupancy restrictions, you can enforce the ones already on the books, which will force the business to reconsider their business model. Second, you can put in place specific rules that will have the effect of requiring responsible drinking behavior that has a secondary effect on the specific risks of COVID transmission in dining and drinking environments. I would suggest the rules that we promulgated for our own outdoor seating:

1. Reservations only. We’ll have contact info for contact tracing and we’ll have a way to ensure that everyone knows the rules before they sit down.

2. Outdoor seating only. Putting aside the obvious and indisputable evidence that outdoors is, at a minimum, considerably safer than indoors, forcing conduct into the light of day will have the secondary effect of further limiting the ability of crowds to grow and make conduct visible to regulators.

3. No parties of more than four — no exceptions. This may seem unintuitive to people who don’t work in the restaurant industry, but to those of us in it, it’s clear as day. When groups grow beyond four, the conduct becomes the loud spoken, big laughing, disruptive, talking-over-each-other stuff that spreads COVID really effectively. More people means more show-offs, more reason to raise your voice to be heard or noticed, more need to squeeze together. The problems posed by parties of more than four are far more serious than those posed by alcohol. Those parties bring a critical mass of people that pose the possibility of mob rule over the rules of your establishment.

4. No rearranging the furniture. No exceptions.

5. A 90 minute cap on seating times (which has the dual effect of limiting the amount a patron can drink and limiting their exposure to the folks with whom they’re drinking with)

These aren’t difficult policies to follow — we’ve been doing it for two weeks. Good policy is narrowly tailored to the behavior that it wishes to encourage or proscribe. The above policies are narrowly tailored to proscribe the specific behavior that is causing the problem — drunk jagoffs crowding into places. And, they also encourage responsible conduct in the COVID era, for example a couple or two who have decided to get a drink and take a break from their house.

And, if you’re still doubting that the latter is fundamentally necessary during this quarantine, let me explain why it is. We may be living this way for a while. Even if we have a vaccine early next year, it may be only 70% effective and, when last polled, 33% of Americans have said they won’t get it. If we need 65% of Americans to be immune to COVID to have the herd immunity necessary to really re-open, those numbers ain’t going to get us there.

The public policy ought to be focused on encouraging people to responsibly enjoy the outdoors while they can before what is feeling like an inevitable cold-weather shut down. Part of that is being able to drink on a sidewalk, patio, or whatever responsible outdoor setting a brewery or a restaurant can provide. We know that the yellow phase was working (and it allows outdoor dining and drinking). We would urge the County to lift its rules and urge the Governor to return us to the yellow phase to address the current surge of cases.

For those of you with reservations, while the new policy won’t be enforced until tomorrow, it technically went into effect today. We are law abiders and while we disagree with this law, we will follow it. To quote George Costanza, “we’re living in a society, here, people.”

We will be in touch with those of you who have reservations shortly. If you agree with what I have said here, we encourage you to be in touch with your County Councilperson as well.

As always, your continued support means more to us than I’ll ever be able to really explain, despite being the most long-winded bar owner in history (which is a very, very competitive category).

With love,

Pete

Let’s Spend the Summer Outdoors: Indoor Dining Rooms Remain Unsafe in the COVID-19 Era

Around the country, we are witnessing a surge of new cases in areas that sprinted to reopen their bars and restaurants. Just two weeks after reopening dining rooms, there is reason to fear that Allegheny County could be on the precipice of its own. We’ve watched the reopening experiences of restaurants and bars around the country and around the world. We’ve also done an independent analysis of the data that we’ve seen. And based on those findings, at the Independent, Hidden Harbor, and Lorelei, we have reached the conclusion that offering indoor dining and drinking is presently unsafe for our guests, our staff, and the community at large. On the other hand, we believe that outdoor seating with six feet distancing between tables is safe for the staff serving those tables and will effectively prevent the transmission of the virus between guests of different groups.  Our conclusions are based on the following.

Over the last six months, as researchers have gained a better understanding of the pathology of transmission, there are several conclusions that have become generally accepted.  

First, the spread of the virus via fomites (a fancy word for transmission by touching inanimate objects) is considerably lower than anyone initially expected.  Washing your hands is effective -- but fomites, especially in outdoor settings with ultraviolet light exposure, aren't particularly good at preserving enough virus to infect another person.  

Second, because that the virus primarily spreads through respiratory droplets, the chances of transmission increase or decrease based on two variables: the amount of total viral load in a given volume of air and the time that an uninfected person is exposed to that air.  As such, the virus spreads most easily in indoor, poorly ventilated environments with cooler temperatures (where droplets have the capacity to saturate the air, creating a dense and infectious viral load).  In indoor settings, if there is not enough air exchange per person (one study suggested that it would have to be 20L per person per second, which is about twice what most commercial building codes require), the viral load in the air will build over time and thus the time necessary for exposure to result in infection will drop.  The increasing viral load over time in poorly ventilated settings negates the ability to socially distance indoors, as the air can become saturated with the virus over time. 

Third, in any environment, but particularly indoors, masks are helpful in lowering the risk of transmission, as they lower the overall number of respiratory droplets that go into the air.  

Fourth, and most importantly for the purposes of our planning, the virus is actually very difficult to transmit in most outdoor settings, provided that people practice social distancing.  Minor, even imperceivable shifts of air current that exist naturally outdoors make it incredibly difficult for a current of air carrying droplets from one person to reach another person if they are six feet away.  Even to the extent that some droplets from the infected person make their way to the other person, so few do that it requires a long period of exposure to reach the total amount of viral load that would get the other person sick.  

This point is illustrated not just by various experiments testing air samples in various conditions, but also by contact tracing of known cases.  In a contact tracing study in China of over 3,000 incidences of transmission, only one of those transmissions occurred outdoors, and that transmission occurred where two acquaintances spoke to each other for a prolonged period of time in a close face-to-face setting without masks.  

Based on the foregoing, we are comfortable offering and expanding our outdoor seating.  We are comfortable that the relatively short time periods that servers will be spending table side, that our servers’ use of masks when standing table side, and that the six-foot separation between tables will limit our servers’ exposure to an infected person (and vice versa) below the threshold necessary for transmission and will similarly limit our guests’ exposure to other parties from who they are separated by six feet.  Additionally, by maintaining mostly daylight hours, UV exposure from natural light will mitigate possible fomite transmission and may even mitigate the amount of viable virions on the surface of respiratory droplets. 

We, however, do not believe that we can safely open for indoor dining and drinking until further notice. The harsh reality is that COVID-19 spreads effectively in indoor environments, and the two ways in which we are able to mitigate the risks of indoor transmission — enforcing universal masking and limiting the time of a person’s exposure to contaminated air — don’t work for restaurants. It’s hard to wear a mask when you’re eating and drinking. Asking guests to comply would be difficult and inhospitable. Similarly, limiting our guests’ time indoors would be difficult. Our outdoor reservations are capped at 90 minutes, however, we believe that duration is too long to risk indoor exposure.

In addition, we believe that the “green phase” rules that Pennsylvania has promulgated for restaurants does little to help mitigate the risks of indoor dining. For the most part, it focuses on sanitization to reduce transmission by shared surfaces. That’s certainly a nice thought, as cleaning is something within the restaurant or bar’s control. But it misses the generally held consensus that the primary way in which COVID-19 is spread is via suspended respiratory droplets, some of which may remain in the air for extended durations of time. As such, one cannot entirely mitigate this risk by six feet spacing between parties, as the air in the room as a whole will saturate over time — the longer an infected person is in the room, and the longer that you stay in the room with them, the more likely that they will create an environment from which your prolonged exposure may result in infection.

While cases in Allegheny County are low compared to places in which there are current outbreaks, we recognize that every single case represents a spark. Indoor dining rooms and other confined spaces are the tinder in which we have to pray those sparks do not land, and, until we have better prophylactic measures, a vaccine, a viable cure, or a tested scientific solution (perhaps a better understanding of how ventilation can be used to make indoor environments safe), we do not want to risk adding to that tinder.

In the meantime, we will continue to offer outdoor seating and food and drinks to-go, focusing on solutions that we believe are safe for ourselves and our community.

With Love,

Pete

A Modest Proposal: Our spirits and cocktails director, Adam Henry, urges you to support the petition to allow bars and restaurants to sell spirits and cocktails during the PA shutdown

Friends:

You’ve been buying boatloads of our “just-add-rum” mocktails, and we can’t thank you enough for it. But you know what would be even better, both for you and for us? A rum-included option, especially since our 600-odd state-run liquor stores have been closed in their entirety for three weeks, with no end in sight.

As you may know, under Pennsylvania law, we cannot sell spirits or cocktails to go. Is that a well-intentioned policy? Probably. But it’s hardly a rational one, seeing as we can sell you both beer and wine to go (the latter with a special permit). In fact, we can sell you a *gallon and a half* of 12% imperial stout, containing 23 oz. of pure ethanol, but not a cocktail with the legal-standard serving of 1.5 oz. of 80-proof spirit, containing 0.8 oz. ethanol. To use a legal phrase, the distinction is arbitrary and capricious.

Why do we point this out to you? Well, our industry is in unprecedented straits. While our restaurant group has worked hard to adapt its model and managed to keep payroll at approximately three-fourths of pre-closure level, many of our cocktail-forward peers have closed and laid off their entire staffs. Yet each of us is sitting on inventories of thousands of dollars of spirits. Each of us also employs talented and conscientious professionals who are trained and experienced in the responsible service of alcohol, including through the state’s own RAMP program.

There is an obvious win-win solution to these issues, and it is allowing Pennsylvania licensees to serve cocktails and even spirits to-go - at a minimum during the pendency of state stores’ closure, but more effectively, through year’s end. This would restore the flow of spirits to our state’s millions of responsible imbibers, while providing employment to thousands of hospitality workers and giving their employers a fighting shot at survival, post-shutdown.

We’re not alone in thinking this way. In fact, our good friend Lew Byrson, the distinguished Pennsylvania-based spirits writer, has drafted a petition to Governor Tom Wolf, seeking this same modest but impactful change. Please check it out at the link here, and do consider signing it.

Mahalo, all.

Adam Henry