Brewery ARS’ story starts generally like other amazing breweries, with homebrewing and, later on, … Belgian chocolate? Sure, there were plenty of twists and turns on the road to opening Brewery ARS, but that didn’t stop Andy and Sean Arsenault, brothers and the brewery founders. It just made their beer that much better and different. Luckily for South Philadelphians, that means there’s great craft beer just around the corner.
Andy and Sean started homebrewing in the early 2000s. They started with extract brewing and worked their way up to all-grain, finding time to brew every weekend. What’d they do with all that beer? You’ll have to ask Andy, Sean and their friends and family… They also won several homebrewing competitions and, along the way, Andy and Sean started to realize their beer was really, really good.
During the homebrewing years and continuing to do this day, Andy has worked in sales for Yakima Chief Hops, a grower-owned network of family hop farms. This experience has provided Andy with a depth of hop knowledge that most, even seasoned and excellent professional brewers, do not have. The brothers have relied on this expertise both in their homebrewing years and since opening Brewery ARS where they’re known for mixing both old and new style hops to create tasty hazy IPAs (more on that later).
10 years into the homebrewing game is when they decided to start up their own brewery, but not right away. Andy moved to The Golden State, and enrolled at one of UC Davis’s brewing programs. In addition to gaining knowledge and experience translatable to the professional brewing life, he enthusiastically “tested” out many of the state’s amazing breweries, including Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada and Russian River. This experience provided Andy with valuable insight into the brewing process. Upon graduation, Andy moved back to the Philly-area and started working at Victory Brewing Company. He worked his way up to head brewer where he focused on brewing the popular Prima Pils. Professional brewing experience – check!
Meanwhile, Sean was a salesman in the U.S. for a French chemical company. In 2008, Sean’s U.S. sales position was eliminated due to the effects from the Great Recession, but the French company wanted to keep Sean, so they offered him a position in France. When you’re looking to eventually open a brewery and you’re offered a job in a continent with arguably the beers in the world, you say yes. Sean and his wife, Erica, moved abroad. During their time abroad, Sean visited well over 100 breweries, sitting down with brewmasters from some of the most well-regarded beer regions, primarily in the UK, Germany, Denmark and, of course, Belgium. A healthy marriage requires compromise, so Sean had a deal with Erica that, for road trips to Belgium, in exchange for getting Belgian chocolate (Erica loves chocolate) and Sean driving to Belgium, they would go to a number of breweries and Erica would drive back (responsibility both in fostering a positive relationship and not driving after enjoying a healthy amount of awesome Belgian beer).
Sean came back to Philly after four years abroad, and the brothers immediately began developing a business plan. After identifying how much money they needed to start up, Andy and Sean went about fundraising. This took longer than expected mostly because they did not want to involve any banks – they wanted their investors to have a personal and genuine belief in their success, so they only took investments from friends and family. Their business pitch involved making a bunch of homebrew, inviting friends and family over, knocking their socks off with the beer quality and then presenting their idea to open a brewery in South Philly. Persistence paid off along with many friends and family who believed in the brothers and the liquid they produced. They eventually raised the capital needed to make their dream a reality. Next step was to find the brewery’s physical location in the City of Brotherly Love.
That location is where Brewery ARS remains today, a former autobody shop on West Passyunk Avenue. The space has a bunch of South Philadelphia character as you walk into the chill taproom, order beer from the bar in the back and view the production area on your right. You can view where the magic happens as you sip on a delicious pint (how I like it best). Brewery ARS opened their garage door in December 2016.
Although Andy already had the education and training of a professional brewer, it took time for him to get used to Brewery ARS’ 10-barrel manual brewhouse (capable of brewing up to 310 gallons of beer wort per batch). That is because the brewhouse he was working on at Victory was a 50-barrel automated system (capable of brewing up to 1,550 gallons of beer wort per batch). Now, the Brewery ARS team would be working on a 10-barrel manual system. Think pushing buttons versus shoveling very heavy wet grains (which is back breaking labor). Scaling beer recipes down from 60 to 10 barrels also takes time and experimentation. It didn’t take too long though.
It was at the conclusion of the second year that the brothers realized Brewery ARS had staying power. In the beginning, they started with smaller batches of beer to foster excitement for the brewery and create increased demand. Their love for Belgian beers, especially saisons, led them to start out with an IPA-less lineup (what?!). Brewery ARS soon after began capitalizing more on Andy’s hop knowledge, and started turning out traditional European style beers, but also the hazy beers that have swept the city and stolen the hearts of many craft beer initiates. More and more bars started asking for their beer to put on tap, so Brewery ARS slowly upped their production to meet the increasing demand. Their magic with hop combinations led to their Todas Las Limas, a hazy IPA, being named best beer in Philadelphia by Philadelphia Magazine.
Brewery ARS loves its neighborhood and city, so it’s named at least a couple beers to honor important moments for its home. One was after the Philadelphia Eagles won the 2018 NFL Superbowl with the one and only Nick Foles as a wide receiver. You might’ve heard about the famous play, the ‘Philly Special’. Well, Brewery ARS has the ‘South Philly Special’ an IPA that sells out quick and leads to refills even faster. It’s released once a year around the start of each NFL season, so IPA lovers need to move fast each year.
Now some serendipity (because we all need a little bit of that right now). The brothers filled out most of their production area within 6 months of opening (with a 10-barrel brewhouse, 6 fermenters and a brite tank). Given Brewery ARS’s expanding popularity and a limited footprint in a tight Philly neighborhood, in April 2019, the brothers decided to stop outsourcing their canning needs and added their very own canning line. What was already a smart move evolved to genius when COVID-19 hit (i.e., the draft beer Armageddon). Having a canning line allowed Brewery ARS to quickly pivot business models from majority draft sales to majority packaged sales (from pints to 4-packs). That means Brewery ARS packages its beers right when its ready, not when a third-party company is ready to do it. It also means fresher product more consistently, better availability for consumers and lesser production costs. It has helped the brewery to sustain sales levels while keeping its taproom closed for on-premise consumption, a rarity in the COVID-19 craft brewery world.
Brewery ARS just celebrated its 4th anniversary, which is a huge accomplishment and a strong indication that Brewery ARS is here to stay. Its origin story provides a blueprint on how to start a successful brewery. Specifically, Sean and Andy did not just go straight to opening Brewery ARS. They each developed a unique skillset and knowledgebase to compliment the other so that Brewery ARS could stand out from competitors in the South Philly market and keep operation costs low. Their success has come with a lot of hard work and smart thinking, sprinkled in with a little luck, like getting the canning line just before COVID-19. That’s not to diminish their success, as “luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get,” as Ray Kroc so aptly put it. That quote applies to Brewery ARS. If you’re in the area, go check them out. You’ll be happy you did.