A Downingtown homebrewer is hoping to bring an authentic Irish pub experience to the borough
Dublin Brewing Company is slated to open to the public this spring.
With 70 people and a live band recently in his new pub for a fundraiser, Dublin Brewing Company owner Brendan FitzGerald learned something: It’s a blast behind the bar.
“It just reinforced the fact that I love people, and I love the whole beer culture thing,” he said. “I just feed off the energy of it, is the only way I can describe it.”
The private party, held for a Downingtown marching band, was the first real foray FitzGerald had running his Irish pub as he approaches its spring opening at 137 Wallace Ave. in Downingtown. But it’s been a decade in the making, after FitzGerald, 56, began considering how he’d turn his homebrewing hobby into a business.
But for a moment, with his bar full for the event in February, he saw that dream approaching reality.
Dublin Brewing Company is slated to open to the public in May. As FitzGerald finishes securing the last of his permits and approvals, he’ll begin hosting private events this month.
It’s been a long time coming. Six years ago, FitzGerald bought a shipping container and began filling it with homebrewing equipment purchased at auction. He found his location four years ago, and, as a general contractor himself, began slowly turning it into an authentic Irish pub. After his day job, FitzGerald turns his attention to the pub, working nights and weekends.
Over the winter, when inches upon inches of snow were dumped on the region, he holed up at the pub, figuring he may as well get work done if he was going to be snowed in anywhere.
“It’s a labor of love and of exhaustion,” he said. “I’m too stupid or stubborn, which comes from the Irish part, to stop and give up. Giving up has never really been a thought.”
FitzGerald’s love of homebrewing began back home in Ireland. As a kid, his next-door neighbor would make homebrew, which he’d sample here and there. He moved to the United States as a teenager, but later, when he took a trip back to Ireland, he bought himself a cider kit, which led him to the first drink he’d ever make. He went on to try his hand at beer. Eventually, he joined the BUZZ Homebrew Club in West Chester, and became part of leadership there.
At Dublin Brewing Company, FitzGerald plans to serve his Irish dry stout — similar to a Guinness — along with an Irish red ale (“I had a party; three kegs of that disappeared in a matter of hours,” he mused), a number of IPAs, plus a pale ale, which he calls “a gateway beer.” He plans to rotate in other brews, such as his bourbon barrel aged imperial stout, which gets a vanilla essence from the charred wood.
For wine and cocktail appreciators, he’ll have Pennsylvania wine and spirits.
He plans to offer food from behind the bar to start, like wings, hot dogs, brats, soups, and flatbreads. Eventually, with a full kitchen, he plans on adding pizzas, paninis, charcuterie boards, and more.
The goal is to bring the Irish pub experience to Downingtown. He took inspiration for his color scheme from Abbey Tavern in Howth, Ireland, not far from where he grew up in Kilbarrack. It feels very inviting, FitzGerald said, and he wanted to make his space feel small and comfortable, even though it can fit up to 100 people. As more finishing details and decor come in, he wants it to look older, so customers feel like they’re being transported to Ireland.
Within the larger bar, he also built a library in the taproom that looks reminiscent of the visage of Temple Bar in Dublin. He envisions that space as a “quiet car,” where people can sit and relax away from the singing he hopes will commence in the main bar. It doesn’t hurt that your location settings will show you at the real Downingtown Library, and so you have plausible deniability for your whereabouts, FitzGerald added.
“I just want people to be able to come in, have some fun and just feel the authenticity of it,” he said. “It’s a real experience I’m trying to give people, and I hope they give me the opportunity to give them that.”
Scaling up from a hobby to a business has been a challenge. (“It’s kind of like having kids. You’re never really prepared for it,” he noted.) But FitzGerald has a vision, and when he’s working late in the evenings, he puts on Irish music, and pictures how the pub will look with people.
“My world literally changes once this place opens, and I just can’t wait,” he said.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
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