Black Brewhouse is sharing drinks, customers, costs, and ambitions

Erika Turner has some advice for anyone considering opening a tasting room in 45 days: Don’t. “I don’t recommend it,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper . She can laugh about it now, for the most part. “I’m not recovered yet, but it’s OK.” The mad dash began late last year, when Turner applied to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Project Pop-Up program with an idea she and her mother and business partner, Diane Turner, had been kicking around for years: Put different Black-owned beverage makers in the same room. Turner brought in Marcus Wyatt of Windy Bridges Brew , whom she knew through Pittsburgh’s Barrel & Flow beer festival. The proposal got the green light. Then they had to turn a former yoga studio on Forbes Avenue into a tasting lounge in time for the NFL Draft. Black Brewhouse opened April 23, putting Turner’s TLC Libations cocktails and spirits alongside Wyatt’s Windy Bridges beer. There were certainly quieter weekends to open a Downtown drinking spot, though the promised Draft bonanza proved more complicated for businesses outside the event’s immediate footprint. “It was cool because we were Downtown,” Turner says, but the crowds “didn’t really filter out” the way many businesses hoped. Then came another challenge: explaining what, exactly, they had opened. “People are like, ‘What is it? Is it a bar?’” Turner says. “I mean, yeah, we have a bar.” She prefers “tasting lounge.” TLC Libations and Windy Bridges are the mainstays, but the idea is bigger than putting two brands behind one counter. Other Black-made drinks and collaborations rotate through the menu. Local art hangs on the walls. DJs play. Depending on the night, somebody might be watching a game while somebody else starts dancing. Erika Turner and Marcus Wyatt of Black Brewhouse Credit: Photo courtesy of Black Brewhouse The pairing comes with some history attached. TLC is Pennsylvania’s first Black woman-owned distillery, while Windy Br