By Scott Scanlon
(Image above: Working as a brewer in the most iconic Irish pub in Western New York has been a dream come true for Bryan Kirchmyer, 34, who grew up in South Buffalo. All photos by Scott Scanlon)

Bryan Kirchmyer takes more time than most brewers to lager the beers he makes at Gene McCarthy’s Old First Ward Brewing Company, even when it comes to prepping for the chaos that comes each March to Western New York’s most iconic Irish pub.

“To lager, in German, literally means ‘to store,’” he said last week at the brewhouse he runs in the Hamburg Street tavern, an outfielder’s throw from the Buffalo River.

“Ninety percent of our beers are very, very traditional,” he said.

It’s why he stores his Gene’s Lager, Against the Grain hefeweizen and several other favorites in fermentation tanks for up to 10 weeks, as much as a month longer than most of his lager-making peers.

You can do that when almost all your beer is consumed on premises, Kirchmyer said. It frees him from the quotas of brewers who produce brands not only for their brewery taprooms, but other drinking establishments and retail sites.

“As it’s lagering, there’s still a little bit of yeast in suspension in beer,” he explained. “That yeast is slowly chewing away all the impurities. It’s cleaning the beer up. The longer it sits, the cleaner and crisper overall.”

The first pub popped up on the Gene McCarthy’s site almost 90 years ago. It became a waystation, under different names, for grain mill scoopers, firefighters, politicians and, I’m told, many of the printers and other staffers from my former employer, The Buffalo News.

Its namesake bought the place in the early 1960s and bedecked it in Notre Dame, Buffalo sports and Irish regalia. It has since become a regional year-round destination for those who yearn for the feel and flavors of the Old Sod.

McCarthy sold the place in 2012 to Bill Metzger and Matt Conron. They’d worked together in the 1990s at the former Breckenridge Brewing Company on Main Street in downtown Buffalo, and chose to keep the popular name of their new pub.

Under their stewardship, the familiar look and feel remain, though lots of craft brewery stickers have been added to the cooler doors in the taproom.

Metzger and Conron wanted Gene McCarthy’s to offer its own beer, while still providing other brews, beverages and spirits of choice. They started selling their own beer, made on a 3.5-barrel brewing system, in March 2014.

“At the beginning it was a Frankenstein brewery,” said Kirchmyer, who started working there for free a year later as a Hilbert College intern. “It was pieces of breweries that were closed down, bought up, mixed up and put together.”

He started getting paid the following year and officially became the head brewer about a year after that. Conron sold his share of the business to Metzger about two years ago.  

Kirchmyer and I talked last week in the more automated 7-barrel brewhouse, which features a Criveller brewing system purchased in 2019. He can make enough beer in one batch to fill 1,736 pint glasses. Lagering continues in an adjoining cooler.

“The system is still not completely automated,” he said, “so I have a lot of hands-on flow rates and valves. I like control here. There’s something about the human touch.”

Kirchmyer, 34, single and raised in nearby South Buffalo, lives a short walk from his workplace. Several extended family members hail from the Old First Ward.

“I grew up walking past the bar all the time, throwing snowballs in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s been really special for me to get a consistent brewing job here.”

Below is more from our interview, lightly edited.

Q: When does the brewing mayhem start this time of year?

More than a month before March. I started with a double batch Red Clover Irish red. That way I’m stocked up. That’s one of our highest sellers during this time.

Q: Is it twice as busy as other parts of the year?

Definitely, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays for fish fries.

Q: What’s your brewing philosophy?

You only need four ingredients to make beer: water, malt, yeast, hops. We try not to be lazy on any of those ingredients. Those are the ingredients in traditional lagers, and we designed this brewery specifically to make lagers. They’re not only what many of the customers like but also what the owner, boss (General Manager Margo Kowal) and I enjoy the most. It’s our job to introduce these styles to our customers. We don’t jump on what I call ‘flavor-of-the week’ beers.

Q: There’s a storied tradition here. A lot of folks come in because they want to experience a pub in an Irish-American neighborhood, where affordability and old style also count.

Absolutely, but we have quite the different demographic, including our local clientele. Not everybody drinks craft beer, so our owner decided at the beginning to make sure we’re also selling macro beer. We have 11 of our own beers on tap, and I generally have almost eight different styles on at once. You’ll never see four IPAs on tap here. We like to have a variety.

Q: And Guinness?

That’s the 12th one on tap. We also try to always have something dark of our own, like a stout or a brown ale or a red ale. Right now, we have a Rauchbier, which is a smoked German lager.

Q: Ever try to make a Guinness-style stout?

The owner and I have talked about this. If you’ve been drinking Guinness for 30 years, you might sample some other dry Irish stouts on nitrogen, but these drinkers are hard to convert, so we’re going to keep Guinness and keep them happy. With Guinness. it’s 100 years of consistent quality.

Q: What are the top beers most of the year?

Gene’s Lager is usually number one. Then it’s usually a fistfight for second, when they’re on, between the St. Patrick Pils, the hefeweizen or a pale ale.

Q: And in March?

Unfortunately (with a chuckle), Guinness is the number one selling beer. Then comes Gene’s Lager.

Q: What’s your favorite beer to brew?

A big, big stout. It gets the complexity of the wort (sugar water extracted from malted grain during the brewing process), and the aromas of all those dark grains in the air, which is absolutely phenomenal. I use the wort sugar water in my coffee instead of sugar. I also love brewing IPAs, because of the fragrant hops.

Q: Are lagers harder to make?

They’re pretty much harder to make consistently clean. Our Helles lager, or any Helles lager, may be one of the hardest styles to brew overall, because it’s very slightly hopped. It’s mostly the expression of the yeast and the malt, and making the hops really clean, crisp and drinkable. There’s nothing to hide (in terms of adding other ingredients to mask a brewing error).

Q: Does your Helles taste the same now as it did the first couple years you were first making it?

It’s day and night. Over the years, I’ve been slowly hand-selecting different types of grain for any German lager or pilsner I brew, I use German malts, German grains, German hops. Now I can tell where the types of malts came from because of the quality. Over the years, I’ve switched up different types from different German maltsters. I probably went through 10 or 12 different ones just on the base malt.

Q: What are your favorite Irish red ales not brewed at OFW?

This time of the year, I always go around trying Irish reds. Great Lakes Conway’s Irish Red is probably my favorite. The one at BriarBrothers is fantastic. Resurgence just put out their Irish red, which is also fantastic. Hamburg Brewing’s got a fantastic one as well.

Q: Where are the three coolest places you’ve ever had beer?

The Augustiner Munich and the Salzburg locations are my top two, then Schönram Brewery in Bavaria, Germany, near the Austrian border.Our owner sometimes brings me to Germany. He’s also brought me to England and Brussels, Belgium. It gives me firsthand tastes and firsthand experiences with these styles of beer where they were first made, and the chance to sit with brewers over there, which is hugely beneficial.

Related events

Parade days: The 31^st Old Neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day Parade starts at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 14, with a traditional Irish hooley from noon to 4 p.m. at the Valley Community Center, 93 Leddy St.; The United Irish American Association has hosted Buffalo’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade since 1940. Association members will lead the parade down Delaware Avenue starting at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 15.

4 the Ward: Gene McCarthy’s is one of four brewery outlets in the Old First Ward to make 4 the Ward pale ales this month to benefit a neighborhood nonprofit. Kirchmyer brewed a pale ale with the citrus-forward experimental hop WCHB-102; BriarBrothers, a classic American pale ale; Frequentem, a dry-hopped, modern West Coast Pale Ale; and Resurgence crafted their take on an old-school pilsner. Buy all four at their locations, ask for a punch card, and get it stamped at each stop. The Old First Ward Community Center will get $4. You’ll get a pint glass and be entered in a drawing for four-packs and a $25 gift card for each brewery.

Southtowns celebration: Hamburg Brewing Company, at 6553 Boston State Road in the town, promises a St. Patrick’s Day weekend with its popular seasonal red ale, music by Finnegan’s Punch from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, three performances from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, and Chris O’Malley from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day.

WNY craft focuses on beer, wine, spirits and other craft beverages across the Buffalo-Niagara region. Have a tip or idea for a column? Email Scott@WNYcraft.com