E-Malt.com News article: USA, NY: Four Mile Brewing Company on track to open in the fall

Gregg Piechota, Jaye Beattie and Nicholas Bohdanowycz are in the throes of opening up Four Mile Brewing in Olean, first commercial beer brewery in decades.

“We’ve been working on this for about three years,” Piechota, Four Mile’s founder and head brewer, told the Olean Times Herald on January 26. “We’ve done a lot of research, taken a few classes and talked to a lot of brewery owners.”
“We’re excited for this opportunity. This brewing is something that all of us are passionate about and making this fantasy our reality,” added Beattie, who will oversee Four Mile’s tap room and sales.

“It’s been a long road, and we’re ready to get going,” said Bohdanowycz, who will oversee the
brewery’s finances.

With no major delays, Four Mile Brewing is on track to open sometime this fall. During its first year of operations, the brewery will likely produce 1,500 barrels of beer. By its fifth year, the three brewery partners hope to be producing between 5,000 and 6,000 barrels.

“Lately, we’ve just been working on getting our finances together, getting our licenses, and setting the brewery up,” Piechota said. “We’re planning to remodel our buildings and we’ll be ordering custom-made brewing equipment in February,” representing an investment of nearly $1 million.

Four Mile Brewing roots trace back to Piechota’s desire for good, locally produced craft beer. “I’ve been brewing for almost eight years,” Piechota said. “I started making beer because you really couldn’t find good craft beer in Olean back then, and if I wanted it I’d have to drive up to Buffalo to find it. Now, that’s changed because more stores have craft beer.”

“I’ve always wanted to open up a brewery ... and, at first, I wanted to open a craft beer and wine bar and then move into a brewery later on,” he continued. “But then I brought Jaye in because he’s been in the restaurant and bar business for 15 years. We put our heads together and we just figured we’d do what we wanted to in the first place and just open a brewery.”

While Four Mile Brewing marks the return of commercial beer brewing in Olean, it also marks the reintroduction of brewing there. For nearly 15 years more than a century ago, Four Mile Brewing’s location was home to Olean Brewing Co.

The Olean Brewing Co. boasted modern machinery powered by electricity and gas. The brewery also featured a bottling plant and a machine that could produce 80 tons of ice daily.

At peak operations, the brewery employed between 30 and 40 men who worked under the supervision of brew master Conrad Haberstumpf and could produce 30,000 barrels of beer.

The brewery’s operation was short-lived. It closed after 13 years of business. Olean Brewing shared in the fate of many breweries across the country in the 1920s as the 18th Amendment, better known as Prohibition, made alcohol and alcohol production virtually illegal in the United States.

In the decades that followed, the brewery served several other purposes, mostly as a storage facility. Four Mile Brewing will pay homage to the time when Olean Brewing Co. thrived. “We are going to embrace the history of the building itself,” Beattie said. “We have a lot of old relics from Olean Brewing Co. we’ll be putting up and we have a lot of old pictures. In the tap room, we really want to have the ambiance of the pre-Prohibition era. We’ll have old industrial lighting. We’re stripping the walls right down to the brick and we have a local guy fabricating metal tables for us. We want people walking in to feel like they’re in a speakeasy.”

“The building and its history are really cool and we want to celebrate that,” Piechota said.

Three beers will always be on-tap at Four Mile — a pale ale, India pale ale (IPA), and a black IPA. Each variety is an original recipe Piechota developed.

“I’ve been working on these for years,” he said. “... I’ve had a few tasting parties for them, and everybody seems to really enjoy them.”
In addition to the flagship beers, Four Mile will have seasonal beers on tap, as well as several beers made in one-batch quantities.

Bohdanowycz, a certified public accountant, believes Four Mile is entering the market at a very opportune time. “Some people see this as a risk, but I think there’s a lot of potential here,” he said. “Olean hasn’t had a brewery in 70-plus years ... and I think that we’re just far enough outside of the Buffalo market where we can make a name for ourselves.”

He also noted New York has seen an explosion of breweries open during the last several years. In 2011, there were 51 breweries scattered across the state. Now, there are more than 130, with 100 classified as microbreweries, or commercial beer-making operations that produce less than 15,000 barrels of beer annually.


29 January, 2014