Barrel & Flow Fest returns to Pittsburgh with record number of Black-owned breweries

On Thursday afternoon, two days into Barrel & Flow week, founder Day Bracey slowed down to sip a lemon poundcake kombucha.

At Velum Fermentation’s “Ditch Day” — an event that encourages “grown folk to put in PTO, come together and chill” on a weekday, co-founder Nate Rogers said — locals and out-of-towners filtered in to play Connect Four and UNO, order Southern-style food from the North Side’s Roux Orleans and sample collaboration beverages brewed for this year’s festival. Among them was Bracey’s lemon poundcake kombucha, created by Velum and Pittsburgh bakery Meek’s Sweetz Baked Treats.

“I never thought about a sweet vanilla booch, but it works so well. But this festival seeks to serve everybody, drinkers and non-drinkers alike,” Bracey said, before joking that his official role was “freelance drinker.”

Ditch Day isn’t only about skipping work, but one of many events built around the sense of community that has become Barrel & Flow’s defining characteristic.

“We don’t look at this as a party, but as a family reunion,” Rogers said.

Founded in 2018 as the nation’s first Black beer and arts festival, Barrel & Flow has grown into what Bracey described as a movement.

“It’s an economic generator,” he said. “We do a great job of bringing people into this city and putting that money back into the hands of Black folks and allies here in this region.”

The ninth Barrel & Flow Fest kicked off on Wednesday with events running through Sunday. This year, Barrel & Flow launched a Barrels Festival App with real-time event information and a vendor list.

The main craft brew festival, Barrel & Flow’s largest-ever, takes place Saturday at the Stacks at 3 Crossings in the Strip District. The event features craft beer, wine, spirits and other beverages — “anything in a barrel,” Bracey said — from more than 35 Black-owned breweries and distilleries, along with art, live music and a family-friendly S.T.E.A.M. education (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) tent.

Other local collaborations include a pilsner by Pittsburgh’s Cinderlands Beer and Washington, D.C.’s Soul Mega. A beer cocktail called “The Algorithm” celebrates Pittsburgh Tech Week, made by Black BrewHouse, Windy Bridges Brew, Pittsburgh’s first Black-owned brewery, and TLC Libations, Pennsylvania’s first Black woman-owned craft distillery.

Barrel & Flow has grown significantly since the first Pittsburgh event in 2018.

Bracey, a Braddock native, created the festival after traveling the country as a comedian and being told, “if you want to make it, you need to leave.”

While hosting a long-running podcast, “Drinking Partners,” with fellow beer enthusiast Ed Bailey, Bracey began to connect with local brewers. Recording the first episode at Brew Gentlemen in Braddock, he expected to hear about competition among the breweries, but the owner encouraged him to visit others around Pittsburgh.

“It really did change my outlook on my whole career,” Bracey said. “I went from trying to be the funniest, loudest person in the room, to ‘Hey, how do we collaborate with each other?’ The brewing industry understood that a rising tide raises all ships … and that’s where this festival came from.”

Hoping to sell 500 tickets in 2018, they sold 1,200 — and soon ran out of tasting glasses.

“That was the first lesson that we learned,” Bracey laughed.

Organizers had to make an impromptu trip to Restaurant Depot, and after that, improvise with Dixie Cups.

“Pittsburgh desperately needed this,” Bracey said. “This is the worst place in the country statistically for Black-owned businesses. There’s report after report about how this is one of the worst places in the country to live as a Black person in general. So the city needed this.”

“We filled a need Pittsburgh had,” he added. “But it turns out we filled a need people around the world had.”

In the last year, Barrel & Flow Fest has expanded internationally, with Bracey heading to Spain alongside five Black-owned breweries to represent the United States at Barcelona Beer Fest. In April, a sister festival, Barrels on the Bayou, debuted in New Orleans.

While Bracey was proud of both the local and Pittsburgh showing at the inaugural festival, it was also clear that the communal aspect translated.

“We connected the Black community to this $1.7 trillion industry that we’re in, but it had that Southern flair,” he said.

At Ditch Day Thursday, Nigel Woodberry had come straight from the airport and stashed his luggage at Velum before ordering a hazy IPA.

“It’s my mecca every year,” he said of Barrel & Flow.

Woodberry discovered the festival through Bracey’s podcast and has come every year since 2019.

“I remember getting off the airplane,” he said. “I went straight to the hotel where they were doing the symposiums. And for me, at the time, I was like, ‘Oh my God, all these Black people in beer!’ It was a huge deal for me.”

Inspired by Barrel & Flow, he started his own podcast “Beers with Nigel,” where he interviews guests from around the world. “I swear we talk Barrel & Flow every episode because it’s such a big deal,” he said.

During covid-19 shutdowns, Woodberry widened the net, even convincing a London-based brewer to join him at Barrel & Flow in 2021.

“It’s a family reunion. That’s what it is,” Woodberry said.