“Brewcendants” Vol. 1 | After Hours and Friendship Brewing

One thing I’ve never written about till today is the fascinating fact that so many of our current breweries are linked together via the experiences and knowledge gained by one brewer from another. Which led me to create a new word brewcendant.  You can Google if want, but nothing will come up. It’s a truly an original word in beer culture.  I define brewcendant as the lineage of brewers that descend from one brewery to another, creating a family of brewers, that will henceforth be known as brewcendants of one another.

In recent years, you could say Side Project Brewing, and Rockwell Brewing are brewcendants of Perennial. Urban Chestnut is a beercendant of Anheuser Busch, Twisted Root from 4204 Main Street – you get it.

But, the story we’re here to tell today is that of After Hours Brewing, which is a brewcendant of one of my favorite breweries, Friendship Brewing in Wentzville, Mo.

If you just consider the name for a moment, the name After Hours Brewing Company is actually telling you its story.

“We are currently a branch of Friendship Brewing Company out in Wentzville, mainly specializing in barrel-aged and sour/wild ales,” said Brett Love, half of the brain trust at After Hours.

Brett and brother Brandon started brewing as a family thing.  Brandon bought their father a homebrew kit back in 1994, but it was him who caught the bug and has been brewing ever since. Brandon has evolved and is now a brewer at Friendship now, but along the way both brothers have picked up the tricks of the trade and that partnership has evolved not into After Hours.

After Hours Brewing came to be in late 2016, and although they’ve called Friendship home, they’ve been a big part of the festival scene the past two years, pouring their beers at some of the biggest local events including Microfest, Criderfest, Science on Tap, as well as tap takeovers all over town.

“We specialized in wild ales because all of the ones we had commercially were either way too expensive or really weren’t that good,” said Brett. “We figured we could make a better version. Naturally, we started brewing sours for Friendship and came up with the crazy idea to eventually break off and become our own entity. As far as philosophy goes, simply put, we brew what we like and if you like it too, that’s a bonus.”

Currently, After Hours beer is available on tap at Friendship Brewing Company, but soon they hope to actually offer their first ever bottle release.

As for the future, the Love brothers would like to become a full brewcendent by leaving home and striking out on their own. “Sometime, hopefully within the next year, we plan on taking our recipes and beers with us and trying to move into the Benton Park area or at least somewhere close to there. It all depends on what kind of property we come across,” said Brett.

“Once we get our own place we will be doing the same, draft and bottles to go, with the hopes of maybe doing a little self-distribution to a handful of places. That’s of course if we can keep up with production.”For now, you can keep track of new After Hours brews via their Untappd account, but also on Facebook page @Afterhoursbrewco