Matt Schickling, the Wire
When thinking about beer, the word “naked” does not immediately come to mind, but it should.
Naked Brewing Company started, unofficially, five years ago, when Brian Sucevic and Jim Crossland brewed their first batch of Freckles Angry Brown Ale in Sucevic’s garage.
“I was looking to brew and I never really did it. I was into chemistry and math and all that,” Sucevic said. “About five months later, we told our wives, ‘We’re going to LLC and start a brewing company’.”
It took them 18 months to actually get licensed, making Naked one of the very few breweries in the nation to do so in the garage of a house in a residential neighborhood. The house was Sucevic’s, located in Feasterville, and though the thought of having two walk-in refrigerators in the garage sounds like a beer brewer’s dream, it was actually getting pretty inconvenient.
“I’m in there in my pajama pants at night watching football, and someone comes knocking on my door, like ‘My GPS told me there’s a brewery here’,” Sucevic said. “My wife was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to go’.”
Well, not Sucevic, but his brewery.
So, two years ago, he and Crossland packed up their operation and moved it to an independent space just across street road in Huntingdon Valley or Southampton, depending upon what application you use to look it up. The address is 51 Buck Road.
This past December they opened the brewery to the public with a tasting room at that location, complete with a wall of beer cans donated by the Bucks County Beer Can Collecting Society — yes, according to Sucevic, such a group exists.
Crossland is a steamfitter by trade. He makes things for beer production, like racks and mounts, and he salvages equipment from job sites to cut costs.
“We managed to do all of this on a shoestring budget,” Sucevic said.
They’ve also managed to put together quite an eclectic collection of beers, with some more traditional standbys to balance it out.
On tap at the brewery last Thursday was a beer called Jalapeno Bizzness Saison, which captures all the flavor of jalapeno peppers with only mild hints of heat. Also offered was the Freckles Angry Brown Ale, a more traditional take on the English brown ale with a bold flavor and smooth taste.
Their Pomegranate Wheat beer is starting to become a crowd favorite, and can usually be found on tap at bars throughout Bucks including Bar Louie in Bensalem, El Barrio Cantina and Tequila Bar in Holland, Isaac Newton’s in Newtown and the Hulmeville Inn in Langhorne.
Naked Brewing is also regularly putting out sour beers like its Aloha! beer, an imperial stout aged on fresh pineapples. Other regulars in the sour rotation include the Sour Pomegranate Wheat and Aigre Canon, a beer that introduces Le Petomane, a saison, into the sour barrels.
“We haven’t hit a gutter yet,” Sucevic said.
It’s worth noting that there’s no shortage of amusing names you can put on a label when your company is called Naked Brewing. For example, Naked put out a proprietary pale ale for the Buck Hotel and dubbed it Buck Naked. For The Simpsons fans, they brew a red ale called Stupid Naked Flanders.
Currently, they serve drafts in the tasting room and growlers and bigger bottles to go. The goal is, by midsummer, to have a seven-barrel system and begin can production.
Sucevic is hoping that upcoming appearances at Washington Crossing Brewfest, Yardley Beerfest and Newtown Beerfest will help spread the word about Naked Brewing.
He sees the budding Bucks craft scene as inspiring rather than limiting and has gained some close friends among other brewers.
“We’re all buddies in the brewing industry,” he said. “There’s no competition. We all do different enough stuff that no one steps on each other’s toes.”
Naked Brewing Company tasting room is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 10 p.m.
“It hits all the things I love: math, cooking, science, biology,” Sucevic said. “The things I’m really into, it brings them all together.”
