If you brew it, they will come.
That’s the hope, at least, for Hidden River Brewing’s owners Doug Reeser and Kevin Margitich. As soon as June, you’ll be able to hop in your kayak, boat over to Brinton Lodge and sip a Hidden River craft beer while perusing the museum in the historic building.
“We’ve been home brewers for about eight years or so. I started in grad school and he (Margitich) started shortly thereafter,” Reeser said. “We’ve been drinking craft beer since the ’90s. It has been sort of a goal for both of us or a dream for us to get into it.”
On Jan. 22, the pair got a step closer to realizing that dream as the Union Township zoning board approved expanding the variance for Brinton Lodge, formerly Covatta’s Brinton Lodge restaurant on Route 724. The variance allows for the pair to operate a commercial brewery at the site. Now, Reeser said, they need to get the state and federal approvals for brewing and selling alcohol.
The brewery, which gets its name from the English translation of Schuylkill, has ambitious goals for a tiny space. Reeser and Margitich are operating only out of an industrial kitchen and dishwashing room that was part of Covatta’s. The rest of the building is now used as a museum and event venue.
Though they are tiny, they plan on coming out of the gate with some fierce recipes.
“We have an imperial stout with hot peppers, we have a guy that grows ghost peppers that go into our imperial stout and we age it on a few different things. Some will be aged on a fruit or aged on chocolate,” Reeser said. “Taking one big, unique beer and making multiple beers out of it is one thing we aim to do.”
That guy who grows the ghost peppers? He’s local. In fact, Hidden River plans on using almost entirely locally-sourced ingredients for its brews. And though the food menu hasn’t yet been compiled, either the ingredients or the food itself will be from local sources as well.
“Our food prep space is going to be behind the bar, so we might get some things from local bakeries or have light fare that we prepare,” Reeser said.
The pair is more concerned with the beer recipes. Going from brewing at home to doing so in a commercial setting presents some unique challenges.
“The biggest issue is scaling up our recipes. We’ve been doing basically what small breweries do, brewing on a small level. Now instead of 10 gallons at a time, we’ll be brewing 30 to 90 gallons at a time,” Reeser said.
Margitich and Reeser invested their personal savings, took out loans and found a private investor to make the brewery happen. They are banking on the idea that people will come for the unique qualities of the building and stay for the beer.
“We’re right at the river. You can canoe or kayak right up and dock your boat and come in,” Reeser said. “It’s a great river, especially that stretch from Reading to Pottstown.”