Something kosher is on tap at Mondays Brewing Company
“I feel like we can provide a real option," Fee said.
An April 1 post on the Jewish Pittsburgh Facebook page announcing Mondays Brewing Company’s recent kosher certification might easily have been mistaken for an April Fool’s joke.
After all, the notion that a non-Jewish professor of web and mobile app development would seek kosher certification for his brewery, set in the former Hough’s Taproom — a neighborhood hub for nearly two decades — seemed almost laughable.
And yet, that’s exactly what Sam Fee did with Mondays Brewing Company.
The first Mondays Brewing Company location opened in Peters Township in 2020 as the world was beginning to grapple with the COVID pandemic.
Fee said the company brews most of the beers it serves at the South Hills site, but it also collaborates with other breweries and serves a variety of Pennsylvania-made drinks —wines, seltzer, whiskey, rum and more.
After some tough early days, the brewery was doing well enough for Fee to begin thinking about a second location. His eyes soon turned to Greenfield.
“We opened it in late 2024, around Thanksgiving, primarily because we wanted a second taproom,” he said. “And, of course, everyone knows about Hough’s. The location was incredible. It was a good way to open a second taproom that was different from what we were doing in Peters.”
The idea to brew kosher beer came to Fee after a conversation with some customers in Greenfield while he was tending bar.
“They were saying they like to drink beer because it’s kosher,” he remembered. “I explained that not all beer is kosher. That’s when I started learning more about becoming kosher certified.”
Fee knew there was a large Orthodox community in both Greenfield and Squirrel Hill and viewed getting certified as kosher as an opportunity to better serve the community.
Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as coming up with the idea and executing it.
Fee said he worked with Rabbi Chaim Itkin from the Vaad Harabonim of Pittsburgh and did a lot of work to ready Mondays Brewing for certification.
The first step was making sure everything in the space was certified kosher.
“I had to learn all the different symbols, and then we contacted all of our suppliers and made sure we had documentation from them so that we know that every single ingredient in the brewery is kosher certified,” Fee said.
Once the ingredients were verified as kosher, Fee said they had to make sure the brewing process was kosher.
The result is that all the beer brewed by Mondays Brewing is kosher. The certification is at both the Peters Township and Greenfield locations, with a few caveats.
Mondays is still working through some of its previously brewed beer, so not everything on offer is kosher — yet.
“In Greenfield about eight of the 12 taps are kosher,” Fee said. “We’ll probably have everything kosher by the time we hit the summer.”
The certification applies to the beer brewed by the brewery only and doesn’t extend to any food. At the Greenfield location, there is an attached kitchen; in Peters Township, guests are invited to bring their own food to the establishment.
Collaborations with other breweries won’t be certified kosher, either.
“Whenever we do a collaboration with someone, we’re probably canning it on their canning line. So, it won’t be kosher,” Fee explained. “If we do it, it will be OK.”
Knowing if a beer is kosher is simple. Mondays’ menu has been updated to include a “K” next to the beers that are kosher, leaving nothing to chance.
Fee said he’s excited to provide the South Hills with a kosher option, something its residents probably haven’t had before.
“I feel like we can provide a real option, especially in the South Hills. We always have growlers, so you don’t have to drink in the taproom. If you want to pop in, get some kosher beer and go, you can do that,” he said. “That’s something you couldn’t say before, especially in the South Hills.”
The Vaad’s Rabbi Yitzi Genack said the Vaad is “very excited” to have a brewery certified as kosher in Greenfield.
“We’re very interested in thinking out of the box,” he said. “We’re looking forward to working with a lot of different businesses.”
For Fee, having Mondays’ beer certified as kosher made sense.
“I felt that being certified kosher would be a real service to people,” he said. “I’m interested in serving the community and this struck me as the best way to do it.” PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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