Pittsburgh Pierogi Fest is famous for its vendors putting pretty creative spins on the tried-and-true Polish dumpling that headlines the annual event.
They include everything from far-out dessert pierogi to salsa-topped pierogi nachos and crispy egg rolls to pierogi stuffed with mac and cheese in an ice cream cone. The weirder, the better, right?
Which is why a collaboration between two local pierogi-loving businesses — Penn Brewery on the North Side and Etna’s Cop Out Pierogies —probably isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
On Tuesday morning, brewery owner Stefan Nitsch watched as Cop Out owner Carl Funtal tossed the final ingredient — a handful of handmade potato-and-cheese pierogi — into a mash that head brewer Chris Rudolph had just finished making at around 3 a.m. in one of the brewery’s two giant copper kettles.
The end result in around four weeks will be a light and yeasty lager beer known as kartoffelbier, or potato beer, made with a common pierogi ingredient, Idaho potatoes.
The mash ended up with 200 pounds of the large, dark-skinned taters, which took Rudolph somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hours to grind up, unpeeled, in a food processor.
“Chris has a million ideas and I usually have some crazy stuff in my head, too,” joked Funtal, who was a sergeant with the Shaler Township Police Department before opening his small storefront on Butler Street in Etna in 2012.
“We’re pushing it a little,” admitted Rudolph about the still-unnamed beer, which will be tapped at the brewery May 16 and served at the festival at SouthSide Works on May 17.
Rudolph has been head brewer at the Vinial Street brewery in Troy Hill for 17 years. Questioned about how it might taste, he hedged a bit, saying potato beer doesn’t really have a distinct style in the way an IPA or lager might.
“You do get a little potato character, but it’s not raw potatoes,” he said. “It’s beer potatoes.”
Rudolph first started playing around with the recipe last summer, using potatoes sourced from Kennywood’s Potato Patch to create Potato S’Mash for the “Golden Ticket Awards” at the amusement park on Sept. 6.
He started planning the collaboration with Funtal for Pierogi Fest in January, while the men were sitting in Penn Brewery’s historic taproom.
“I probably had had one or two, and got a crazy idea,” said Funtal.
Maybe not that crazy for a guy whose signature fashion statement is the dangly pierogi earring he wears on his left ear and whose menu includes Watermelon-Tequila-Habanero pierogi.
Cop Out’s traditional cheese-and-potato pierogi are served in the brewery’s restaurant, and he’s been partial to — and a big supporter of — its high-end craft beer ever since he quaffed his first wheat beer there 40 years ago. “It’s always my go-to.”
To ensure they had the right mix of ingredients, Rudolph continued toying with the recipe after his experimental batch last fall until he had the right mix of barley, wheat malt and potatoes.
While each of Penn Brewery’s two copper kettles, which were imported from Germany in 1986, can produce 30 barrels per run, Rudolph is brewing just 10 barrels of the potato beer, or roughly 2,480 pints. Leftovers, if there are any, will be served at the brewery until they run out, or perhaps at Kennywood, which serves Penn Brewery beer in its beer garden.
The spent grain will go to local farmers to feed their pigs and cattle.
“We love to collaborate with things going on in the city and with awesome businesses,” said Nitsch. “It’s fun, and keeps things exciting and entertaining.”
“Even a blind squirrel gets a nut sometimes,” quipped Funtal, adding, “We like to go off the charts with stuff.”
First Published: April 15, 2025, 9:44 p.m.
Updated: April 16, 2025, 7:54 p.m.
