We’re huge fans of the craft beer scene in Pennsylvania, and we’re also fans of all the amazing people that we’ve been introduced to (and all the delicious brews we’ve discovered) through it. So, it was very exciting to discover the documentary film, Poured in Pennsylvania, which takes a deep-dive into the local beer industry and explores its impact on Pennsylvania. Even better? The film has been added to the offerings on Amazon Prime, meaning that, no matter where you live, you can enjoy this awesome exploration into all that PA has to offer the world of beer.
The project is the brainchild of Nate Kresge and his team who run GK Visual, a boutique cinema production house based in Harrisburg. Founded in 2005, this local upstart has worked with clients like PSECU, the Hershey-Harrisburg Wine Trail and the American Music Theater. Kresge says that as he and the crew would travel across the state for various shoots, they’d always look up the local brewery to visit. “It kind of became our ritual,” he says.
The Poured in PA team (L to R): Nate Kresge, Sara Bozich, Nick Chohany, Sean Purcell and Doug Metz
In 2015, GK Visual cooked up the idea for a documentary that would shine a light on the greater Harrisburg area’s craft beer boom. They teamed up with local influencer Sara Bozich to produce what eventually became the documentary, Brewed in the Burg, which featured interviews with brewers, restaurant owners, wholesale representatives, and business leaders. It debuted at Harrisburg Beer Week in 2016, and the positive reception set the stage for a film that would examine the traditions and the future of the industry, while also telling the stories of the people making it happen. After pulling together some funding, they made the film over the course of two years, meeting with over 70 people from the Pennsylvania brewing scene.
One major takeaway Kresge says he had from the experience is how much camaraderie there is within the industry. “It’s a brother or sisterhood, and it’s so tight-knit,” Kresge says. “This isn’t a slam on other states by any means, but since doing this film we’ve joined a few other states’ guilds, which tend to have a much smaller membership and there’s not the same community you feel here in PA.”
One memorable brewery visit was to Sprague Farm & Brew Works in Venango, PA (Crawford County), which he says was a bit unexpected for being kind of in “the middle of nowhere.” “They have a guest house out there, there are these cats living all over this farm just hanging out, and then the inside of this barn has the taproom, and there’s stuff all over the walls, a big stage where they have bands play there all the time … just this great party atmosphere.”
Other highlights included meeting the folks behind Harris Family Brewery, the first black-owned brewers in the state, and generally just watching how much the breweries were actively growing while they were making the film. Kresge also loved hearing about how breweries played such a major part in the revitalization of so many small towns.
“Sometimes breweries open in downtown areas that are struggling, like Elk Creek in Millheim and Brew Gentlemen in Braddock, and it helps promote and bring other businesses back to the area,” Kresge notes. “If people are attracted to come back to a Main Street, it feels like there’s life there.
Storytelling, and really learning more about the makers, was top priority for the filmmakers.
“This is much less about the process of making beer and more about how all these people got into making beer, how is beer relevant in the state, how is PA relevant in the scope of the nationwide industry,” Kresge says.
Poured in PA has been screened at festivals across the county, and now that it’s on Amazon, the GK Visual team is hoping this helps them accomplish their bigger dream: a television series that carries on the objective of the film. Though he thinks a shorter format show could work really well, he says they’ve already come across some pushback from producers who insist they need a formula for each episode, and introduce conflict to the narrative, reality-TV style.
“We don’t want to do a reality show … we don’t even have a narrator, the stories are told by the voices of the people living this, telling their own stories,” he says. “[In this kind of television show] there’s the Bourdain style, where it’s more about the host bouncing from place to place, or the local TV coverage, and there’s not a lot of documentary style where people can tell their own stories and be authentic.”
You can check out a screening of Pouring in Pennsylvania on May 1, 2019 during Harrisburg Beer Week, or just stream it through Amazon Prime in the comfort of your own home! Congrats to this team on all their success, and we can’t wait to see what becomes of their future projects!
- Photos: GK Visual/Poured in PA
