Preservation Beer Co., new brewery in Fairport's Cannery complex, opens soon

The new brewery is the latest project from the owners of Lock 32 Brewing and the former Seven Story Brewing.

After being business partners for nearly 10 years, Casey Dunlavey and Seth Clark sometimes bicker like an old married couple.

Clark wanted to save the original glass-fronted door from their first business, Lock 32 Brewing in the village of Pittsford. Dunlavey would’ve preferred to throw it away. Clark ultimately won and Dunlavey, at least begrudgingly, must admit Clark was right.

“I made fun of Seth for eight years for keeping it,” Dunlavey said.

The door has a new life and a new home. It serves as the entryway between the new brewhouse and the sparkling taproom. The marriage is going strong and is poised to enter an exciting new phase as they open their next project, a brewery in the village of Fairport, Friday. (Pending final state approval. Pay attention to social media for an official announcement.)

Preservation Beer Company, 75 N. Main St. is a new beginning for Dunlavey and Clark. Their second brewery, Seven Story in Bushnell’s Basin, closed in June due to a dispute with the landlord. (Aurora Brewing, based in Cayuga County, has already moved into that space.) Lock 32 Brewing, which is approaching its 10th year in business, opened along the Erie Canal as a tasting room with beer supplied from various contract partners, including Rohrbach and the since-closed Roc Brewing and Custom Brewcrafters. Armed with a 10-barrel brewhouse, Preservation will be able to bring all of its beer production in-house.

“That door is very meaningful, because that (Lock 32) is what allowed this to happen,” Dunlavey said. “This new business was built on the back of that. To bring a piece of Lock in, it’s pretty special.”

Head brewer Phill MacArthur, a former CB’s brewer, joined Lock 32 eight years ago. During the time, he quietly developed and perfected a number of different beers that he will now make at Preservation. The opening tap list, with a bunch of names like Side Seam IPA and Enameled Tin chocolate raspberry stout, provide nods to the canning history of the site. It also features great variety, with an emphasis on balance and sessionability.

“I don’t know how to sum it up,” MacArthur said. “Having production on-site, it’s a whole new dynamic. It’s a whole new energy. It’s a lot of fun.”

Preservation is a perfect name as the brewery sits on the location where beer preservation was improved, refined, and perfected at the American Can Company in the early 1900s. Because the Preservation team, particularly designer Gavin Thomas, really paid attention to the details, the logo represents the seam of a can.

“Whether it was Lock or Seven Story or now here, we’ve always tried to pay homage to the physical location where it sits,” Thomas said. “We walked into a completely blank factory space and gained a lot of inspiration from places we visited together. The name fits really well with the literal sense of the canning industry and then the relationship we’ve developed over the last 10 years or so.”

A walk-in cooler might seem like a goofy thing to get excited about, but when you’ve been dealing with all the headaches Dunlavey and Clark have wrestled with, you understand it.

“For nine years we’ve been running around, for nine years we’ve been gypsies,” Clark said. “We were finding cold storage wherever we could find it. We’ve already been through three places. And then you’re picking up and moving beer all the time, just driving to and from. We finally have (ample) cold storage space on site.

“Now we don’t have to go to Henrietta (site of the current cold-storage facility) for anything.”

“It’s the first time we’ve ever felt like we’ve had a legit blank slate,” Dunlavey added.

Really, it’s just another tangible sign that Clark, Dunlavey, and the Lock 32 crew finally have a permanent home, one where they can store all their beer and one where they’ve been fully able to realize their vision. The new space draws inspiration from a number of places, Dunlavey and Clark said. Throughout their brewery travels, they collected ideas and discussed how they could manifest those inside Preservation. That includes everything from the positioning of shiplap, the incorporation of a wood-burning fireplace, and the exposed nature of the brewing system. Most excitingly, at least for dads like me, there is an interactive gaming area for kids. Just wait till you see the wood accent wall behind the bar and the lineup of taps on each side, including Lukr side-pour faucets for properly pouring lagers.

The beautiful part about the walk-in cooler is that Preservation Beer features a beautiful mezzanine seating area that can be utilized for private parties, work functions, or even fantasy football drafts. And that still leaves ample space on the ground floor for other customers to visit. A newly installed patio encircles the property and provides outdoor seating. Jim Corbett from Corbett Contracting expertly handled the buildout.

Just like he did at Lock 32, Mark Gibson, Dunlavey’s father-in-law, crafted all the live edge tables and the stunning maple wood bar top.

Preservation, which occupies about 5,400 square feet, sits at one end of a long vacant 43,000-square-foot warehouse. It’s right across a parking lot from the already completed Cannery complex. To call the Cannery an entertainment destination would vastly undersell it. The area already includes two breweries (Triphammer and Faircraft), a distillery (Iron Smoke), a sports bar (Tin Cup Social), and numerous other restaurants and businesses.

The Preservation building will also include indoor pickle courts. PBC doesn’t have a kitchen, but with many neighboring restaurants and takeout establishments, patrons will be encouraged to order in and enjoy food at the brewery.

Dunlavey, MacArthur, and Clark all live in Fairport, all within two miles of the new brewery. The trio always wanted to bring all the beer production back in-house (Seven Story had a 1-barrel pilot system) and that is now a reality. They wouldn’t be at this point, however, without the support of its contract partners. It look a little longer than expected to get here (a pandemic pause will do that), but they’re finally ready to jump in.

Parking remains one of the biggest areas of complaint and hassle for potential visitors. To alleviate some of those issues, the building’s landlord is offering complementary concierge service Thursday through Sunday. That’ll remain available even during the winter months. And there remains ample parking in neighboring municipal lots throughout the village. More information is available on the village website.