USA, PA: Orr’s Brewing Company already brewing in Titusville

It was a family affair for young couple to bring brews to Titusville, PA, GoErie.com reported on February 25.

October 2016 will always be a special month for Adam and Kari Orr. It’s when their daughter, Kaylee, was born. But it also happens to be the same month that they committed to opening a brewery in their hometown of Titusville.

Fast forward to the present, and much has changed. Like any 16-month-old, Kaylee is moving around quicker than ever. The brewery is no longer a pipe dream, either. Orr’s Brewing Company officially opened its doors December 22.

“It’s really, really great,” said Adam Orr, who has been home-brewing for several years. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, and my beers are going quicker than I anticipated, but there’s been a couple of nights where I’m able to relax and socialize, and it is nice. It’s like, ‘Okay, we took this building from basically nothing to a working business,’ and that really does feel good.”

Calling the building basically nothing might be an understatement. Prior to the Orrs renovating the building, located at 109 S. Franklin St. in Titusville, it was really just brick walls and floors. Even that might be too generous. The basement was literally a dirt floor.

However, there were a couple things that made the location appealing. For starters, Adam Orr works full-time as an electrical engineer at Roser Technologies Inc. in Titusville, and because of his background, he knew he would be able to do many of the renovations on his own without hiring contractors.

The building is also connected to The Blue Canoe Brewery, which has been a staple of both Titusville and the Northwestern Pennsylvania craft beer community for years. With a new brewery right downtown, craft beer drinkers would now potentially have double the incentive to visit the area.

However, for any of that to come to fruition, Orr knew it would take a considerable effort to get the location transformed into a working brewery that guests would want to visit. The next 15 months of his life were not easy.

Every morning, he would head to the brewery at 5 a.m., two hours before he had to work at Roser, to work on the renovations. Then, when he got off work at 3 p.m., he’d head back to the building to pick up where he left off that morning.

Every night, he was also helping Kari raise a newborn baby.

“It was a huge undertaking, and every square inch had to be redone. Everything was brand-new lumber, and the only thing that we contracted out was the drywall,” Adam Orr said. “One of the first things that we tackled was the basement. It was back-breaking work, jackhammering everything. The whole foundation was basically backfilled with river rock, so every two inches you’d run into issues. All the electric, I redid. We had to redo the whole sprinkling system, and I built new stairwells to the basement.”

But as Adam and Kari can attest, the end result has been worth it.

“I’m always going to associate the start of this journey with the birth of my daughter, and that’s really special,” Adam Orr said.

Thus far, the community has embraced Orr’s Brewing Co., which is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Adam Orr also believes that the brewery will complement The Blue Canoe Brewery nicely.

“I think we could work well off of each other. We don’t do full dinners there, so people can come to Titusville, eat dinner and have a beer at The Blue Canoe and then come over for a beer as well,” he said.

So far, the brewery offers two different IPAs, a brown ale, a stout, a wheat and a pumpkin ale. That could be expanded in the months to come though as the brewery could potentially have 11 taps.

Orr’s Brewing Co. is also offering sandwiches and plans to expand hours to Thursdays and potentially other nights as the weather heats up. The brewery also plans to join the Lake Erie Ale Trail in the months to come.

In the future, the Orrs hope to expand the brewing system.

“Whatever we get out of this business profit wise, we want to throw it back into it to try to help it grow,” Adam Orr said. “I’m really excited for what the future holds.”

27 February, 2018