Prost Profiles: Matt Tucker/Masthead Brewing, Cleveland
Prost Profiles: Matt Tucker/Masthead Brewing, Cleveland
Cleveland brewery produces some of award-winning beers across a wide variety of styles. Was featured at last month's Rochester Real Beer Expo.
A note from me: I was so busy in the weeks leading up to the Expo last month that I failed to finish and publish all of the newcomer interviews I conducted. So here’s a late publication and love letter to one of my favorite breweries in the region, Cleveland’s Masthead Brewing. And massive thanks for Matt Tucker for joining us last month. He brought some incredible beers and I know folks really dug the stuff he poured.
You never know when you send that blind email out if it’s gonna connect. And when it does, when you unexpectedly get a positive response, you’re like, “Holy shit, this is awesome.”
That’s the precise reaction I had when I reached out to Cleveland’s Masthead Brewing earlier this year and asked if they would participate in the most recent Rochester Real Beer Expo. Outside of making some of the best hazy IPAs in this region, Masthead is one of the most lauded breweries, too. In recent years, it has won multiple medals at the Great American Beer Fest and the World Beer Cup (for its incredibly dreamy Midwest Red IPA, Helles lager, jalapeno IPA, and a few others).
Masthead sales manager Matt Tucker kindly drove east on Interstate 90 last month to come hang out with us at the Expo. He brought a beautiful array of hoppy and crisp beers, including an incredible Japanese-style rice lager. And before Tucker came to Rochester, he took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to discuss the beauty of Masthead, his journey with the brewery, and why he was excited to come to Rochester.
Tucker has been with the brewery since the start. Masthead, though quite a large craft brewery, largely only remains available in Ohio, which is why it was such an honor that it participated in the Expo.
Cleveland: Before we talk about the brewery itself, can you tell me a bit about your history with beer and how you got involved in the industry?
Tucker: Working in beer, I started with Masthead. I’ve been with Masthead since Day One. That was January of 2017. I managed bars and restaurants around Ohio before that. I didn’t have a ton of craft beer knowledge before I came into the position. It was limited to what I knew from my distribution reps and the beers that I drank myself, (Bell’s) Two-Hearted (IPA), Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, those were two of the main staples for me. (Editor’s note: Can I get a ‘hell yeah’ here?)
Cleveland: How did you get linked up with Masthead then?
Tucker: I was managing a restaurant on Put-in-Bay (Ohio). It was seasonal. So I came back after the summer and decided I wanted to Cleveland. I followed my now-wife to Cleveland and needed a job. I had a mutual friend from Put-in-Bay who said a new brewery was getting ready to open downtown. I got an interview and started behind the bar and was helping to assist in some of the daily managerial stuff. Eventually, we decided to start canning beer and our general manager asked if I would like to sell beer. I didn’t know what that was like, but I was like, “Sure, why not. We’ll give it a shot.” I started with the east side of Cleveland and now I manage the whole state of Ohio. It’s just been great.
We’ve just been growing. I remember making sales pitches to gas stations, convenience stores, beverage stores, anything in between. It’s really hPelechatyard to cold call on some of these stores when you’re an unknown, small craft brewery in a sea of 300 or 400. Now, walking into grocery stores, we have 10 to 12 different UPCs. It’s really been awesome to see the growth and to see the community stand behind our brand and the quality beers we make.
Cleveland: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the brewery itself?
Tucker: We opened up in January of 2017. Our master brewer/co-founder Mike Pelechaty was college roommates with our CEO Frank Luther. And they were students at Ohio State (another editor’s note: Go Buckeyes!). They did some homebrewing and Mike was winning some competitions. They decided to plant some roots in Cleveland and give it a go on their own. We have an awesome brewing facility. It’s 17,000 square feet and it’s located right downtown (at 1261 Superior Ave.). It’s in a registered historic building (that was most recently a bureau of motor vehicles office and was original constructed in the 1920s as a Ford automobile dealership). Inside of our building, we have the original (automobile) showroom tile that we dug up. We have repurposed barn wood throughout the entirety of the restaurant. It’s just really a gorgeous, open space with some 20-barrel and 60-barrel fermenters there.
Tucker said Masthead expects to produce around 6,500 barrels of beer this year. For context, that would make Masthead roughly as big as Three Heads and Rohrbach in Rochester. “We started with six beers on tap. And now we have 16 to 20 of our own at any given time,” Tucker said. The taproom also features a widening array of styles, including some incredible lagers, barrel-aged stouts (and barleywines), saisons, and sours. And if you haven’t experienced them, I can’t recommend Masthead’s series of single coffee stouts enough. Tucker said that series remains among his all-time favorites. “That’s a selfish one for me, because I was behind the bar when the original one went on draft.” Plus, the taproom has really, really good pizzas.
Cleveland: If you were going to give an elevator pitch to people in Rochester who might be unfamiliar with your brewery, what would you say?
(Editor’s note again: Cleveland is a really, really wonderful beer city. Noble Beast, another brewery I tried really hard to get to Rochester for the Expo, is blocks from Masthead. You should visit.)
Tucker: We are an IPA-forward brewery. We cut our teeth making American-style IPAs, West Coast-style IPAs, and hazy IPAs. I think we were pretty early to the haze craze in Ohio. I still remember lines around the block waiting for our hazy IPAs. That has been an integral part of our success. Along with that, we now have an incredible barrel-aging program. We’ve won gold in 2019 at GABF for our Augenblick Helles Lager. We won silver this year at World Beer Cup for our jalapeno IPA. We have tried a lot of different things stylistically. There’s not much that we won’t try. But IPAs are definitely what we’ve been known for. We have really leaned into our community and we love Cleveland, too. It’s such an awesome city.
A final note: It’s pretty wild to think I’ve been working on this independent publication for over two years now. In that time, I’ve published nearly 200 newsletters, highlighted some of my favorite people in the industry, curated two beers festivals (that featured 150 participants and 4,600 attendees), and continued to break all the biggest news in the region (closures, consolidations, openings, etc.).
The Cleveland Prost remains the preeminent source for regional beer news. If you own a brewery, bar, or beer-adjacent business, this is the best place to reach the nerds you wanna be in front of. So I remain open to sponsorships, advertisements, and sponsored content. Feel free to reach out to me at clevelandprost@gmail.com for more. And more than anything, thanks for all the support. None of this would be possible without the devoted (and thirsty) audience.