Chris and Marc Gignac’s father, Ralph, wasn’t a beer drinker. Which is why there was never even a single can of Detroit’s famed Stroh’s in the house when they were growing up in nearby Wayne, Michigan. 

No matter. As Big Sewickley Creek Brewery, the small craft brewery the brothers opened earlier this month in Economy proves, they still developed an early and lifelong fascination with the fermented beverage.

Even as a child, seeing someone take a sip of beer and then let out a happy “aahhhh” was nothing short of magic, Marc recalls with a chuckle. So of course on the very day in 1989 that home brewing was finally permitted in Oklahoma, he tried a couple of 5-gallon batches.

He was finishing up a surgical and urologic residency at the University of Oklahoma at the time, bound for his eventual career as a kidney transplant surgeon in Pittsburgh. Given his background in science and penchant for experimentation, brewing quickly became one of his favorite hobbies.

“I just loved it,” he says.

Making beer became such a lifeblood that even before the 61-year-old Marshall resident hung up his scrubs and retired from Allegheny General Hospital in June 2019, he was already thinking about brewing and selling the German-style lagers he’s perfected over the last three decades.

The venture reunited him with his big brother, Chris, who lived for in Dallas for 35 years before moving to nearby Baden in 2018 to be closer to family. An anesthesia technologist by profession, Chris often flew north to be the “helper guy” when his brother brewed. So when they started kicking around the idea of starting a brewery a few years ago, it wasn’t a hard sell.

“I figured by the time I was old and gray and not doing anything, I could help in full capacity,” he says. 

Following some soft events last month, the Beaver County brewery officially opened for business on Jan. 6. Both men were behind the bar with their wives, Charlene and Gina, to greet customers and explain the menu board. They also poured pint after $6 pint of the half-dozen “cellar musings” Marc started brewing on site in mid-October in four 10-barrel stainless-steel fermenters from Portland Kettle Works in Oregon.

“You have to be retired to do this,” Chris, 63,  joked earlier in the week as he led a tour of the 4,000-square-foot structure. 

Pandemic build-out

The bright blue building was designed by FJ Baehr Architects in the early days of the pandemic, with beer-friendly concrete floors and clear-span framing for maximum space. Luckily, all the building materials were purchased before the pandemic squeezed supply lines, but it still took Ohio-based C. Tucker Cope nearly two years to construct.

“And there are always things to tweak and adjust,” Marc notes, adding that he and his brother do much of the grunt work.

Eisler Landscapes designed and installed a landscaped yard full of picnic tables, Adirondack chairs and strings of twinkling white lights. 

Even in a city flush with craft breweries — the Pittsburgh Brewers Guild counts more than 40 on its Pittsburgh Brewery Trail — the brothers argue there’s plenty of room for one more.  While Big Beer sales are down, the demand for local craft beer is still brisk “so we have the advantage,” Marc says, “and there are still less closings than openings.”

“My entire life has been about medicine,” he says to explain why he’s so busy in retirement.

Unlike his father, a physician whose life revolved around being a general practitioner, “I didn’t want to be just a doctor and then die.”

Dog-friendly sipping

Corrugated metal walls and high ceilings with suspended track lighting lend an airy, industrial feel to the windowed taproom. There’s also a pair of garage doors that in warm weather will open onto a covered patio and adjoining beer garden, where three log-fed fire pits warm customers’ fingers and toes on chilly evenings. 

Both brothers are serious dog people — Marc has a setter, Chris a Catahoula — and the brewery has tethers on every table and a jar of Milk-Bone treats behind the bar. Man’s best friends also brighten the walls, courtesy of Pittsburgh artist Morgan Christman of Chalked N Loaded. Known for her funky, colorful chalk murals, the artist created a piece called “Beer Hunting” for a cozy corner nook that depicts the owners’ pets in pursuit of lager-filled pint glasses. 

“It seemed to me that they loved their dogs almost as much as their beer,” she writes via Instagram. 

Marc’s love of tie-dye, meanwhile, extends beyond his wardrobe. After retiring, he attended an 8-month welding program at Rosedale Tech, thinking it sounded “cool.” He used that skillset to fabricate psychedelic barrel chairs with custom cushions out of 55-gallon drums from Penn Barrel. 

“I already had a plasma cutter and a oxy-fuel torch,” he says, “so I ground them down to bare metal and used the torch to create color and cut them out to the right shape.”

Creekside brewing

Two things initially drew the Gignacs to the 1-acre lot along Big Sewickley Creek that formerly housed a gun shop. First, its grassy location alongside a meandering creek would make for a fun and unusual beer garden. Second, the new subdivisions that keep popping up in nearby Marshall assured a steady supply of customers. 

“It just made sense [to put it] in a place that’s growing,” Chris says. 

The nano brewery is a little different than many in the area, says Marc, in that they don’t bottle or keg their beer. Instead, it’s served directly out of eight 10-barrel holding tanks in a 35-degree walk-in cooler behind the bar. “But we have four extra lines for kegs at some point,” he notes. 

Also, at a time when many Americans are drinking high-alcohol IPAs, most of his lagers are around 4% ABV. Smokey Joe, a malt-forward, Vienna-style lager, is especially popular.

“We got a lot of feedback from those supporting us and they’re glad to know we’re not hop-driven,” says Marc. “Our local customers are the ones to keep us alive so we brew what they want to drink.”

To keep it fun, the brewery has lined up food trucks every weekend through next summer and there also will be live music on Saturday nights. 

As for working with family, Marc concedes he and his brother don’t always agree on every detail. “We’re making it work,” he says. 

“The core of who he is and I am is what keeps you cemented,” says Chris. “We spent a lot of time apart and now we’re back together.”

Gretchen McKay: gmckay@post-gazette.com.

First Published: January 17, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
Updated: January 17, 2023, 5:35 p.m.