Walk into Masthead Brewing Company on Superior Avenue and the room still behaves like the piece of industrial Cleveland Masthead describes when it calls the Bryant Building a 1921 car dealership turned taproom. The National Park Service lists the Bryant Building on the National Register of Historic Places at 1261 Superior Avenue in Cuyahoga County, which matches the address Masthead publishes for the brewery. Today the company describes the building as a historic shell on the edge of the downtown business district, with a taproom layout built around a very long bar, a patio that looks toward the skyline, and a kitchen turning out Neapolitan-style pies. The brewhouse sits in the same footprint reporters toured before the doors opened in January 2017, and the medals started landing soon after.
The main bar wall at Masthead, with branded tap handles and menu boards. Photo: Masthead Brewing Co.
A name tied to Cleveland’s spelling
The marketing page Masthead keeps for press use spells out the name game in plain language. When the Cleaveland Advertiser launched in 1831, the paper could not squeeze “Cleaveland Advertiser” onto its masthead, so editors dropped the extra “a” and printed “Cleveland Advertiser” instead. Masthead says it took its name from that bit of publishing history, and the Akron Beacon Journal’s opening-week feature repeated the same anecdote with a wink, quoting co-founder Frank Luther hoping beer was involved when the editors made the fix. Kelly Petryszyn’s 2017 beer guide for Cleveland Magazine let Mike Pelechaty tell the story in his own words, framing the surviving spelling as the kind of bold, slightly messy decision that fits a brewery opening on a quieter downtown block. Those accounts line up on the facts even when the tone shifts from newspaper feature to brewery mission copy.
What Scene saw before the first pour
Douglas Trattner’s January 2017 “First Look” for Cleveland Scene is the clearest blow-by-blow of the build-out. Luther told Scene the partners had shopped California and other West Coast cities before settling on Cleveland, chasing industrial bones like the Bryant Building, which Scene noted had most recently housed the Cleveland Title Bureau after its life as a dealership. Inside, Scene described a 20-barrel Craftwerk brewhouse in Michigan-built equipment, fermentation and bright tanks feeding the bar’s draft system, and stainless gear visible from most seats in a 16,000-square-foot floor plate. Luther, Matt Slife, and Mike Pelechaty had already spent about two years on the project by the time Trattner visited, and Scene quoted Luther calling the taproom the engine for brand building, the place where shelf beer gains a memory to hang onto.
The same piece cataloged the taproom furniture in loving detail: hemlock picnic tables fabricated from an old southern Ohio barn, some weighing around 700 pounds, plus high-tops and a bar Scene measured at about 108 linear feet with separate ordering stations so guests were not waving down the same busy bartender. Drop ceilings were gone, leaving roughly sixteen feet of clearance, and Scene reported capacity for about 250 guests at that point in the project. Pelechaty told the reporter to expect six opening beers, mostly American and Belgian ales, including an IPA, a blonde, a witbier, and three stouts, two of them spiced or coffee-forward, with more Woodford Reserve bourbon barrels waiting on stouts for later. General manager Jeff Draeger talked about guest taps, draft cocktails, cold coffee, and local soda rounding out twenty-four eventual lines.
Off to the side, Scene photographed the red-tiled Marra Forni wood-and-gas Neapolitan oven and named chef Nate Sieg, late of Butcher and the Brewer, Bar Cento, and Lola, running a menu of about a dozen red and white pizzas, salads, and starters such as speck-wrapped smoked mozzarella cherries and goat cheese dates with honey. Ordering would work like a busy beer hall: pay at the bar, take a pager, pick up food when it buzzes. Scene also noted the Superior street frontage, the plan for garage doors to open the façade to patio seating, and opening night set for Tuesday, January 17, 2017.
BeerAdvocate’s “Class of 2017” and early medals
Bill Babbitt’s May 2018 BeerAdvocate Magazine roundup, “50 of the Best New Breweries,” included Masthead among openings from 2017 with a photo by Mike Crupi. The magazine sketched the founders as recent Ohio State engineering graduates Luther and Pelechaty alongside Slife, described the 16,000-square-foot downtown taproom and 20-barrel system, and pointed to the red-tiled Neapolitan oven in the open kitchen. That piece also noted an early Great American Beer Festival bronze for Midwest Red IPA in what BeerAdvocate called the Double Red Ale category, and it said Masthead beer was already pouring at Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Browns games, which is a useful snapshot of how fast the distribution story moved in year one even if the tap list today is much larger.
Official GABF winner PDFs fill in the rest of the Midwest Red IPA timeline without leaning on anyone’s memory. The 2017 list places Midwest Red IPA as bronze in Double Red Ale, the 2018 list awards it gold in Double Hoppy Red Ale, and the 2021 list awards it silver in Strong Red Ale, each time naming Masthead Brewing Co. in Cleveland, Ohio. The 2020 list awards gold in Munich-Style Helles to Augenblick Light Lager from Masthead. Masthead’s current homepage groups additional festival wins and magazine nods, but those GABF lines are the ones this piece leans on because the competition publishes them verbatim.
Masthead’s own taproom copy now promises about three hundred seats, a hundred-foot bar, and a fifty-seat dog-friendly patio with downtown views, plus a full liquor program, ciders, wines, cocktails, barrel-aged beer in allocated whiskey barrels, and the hazy IPA and lager focus visitors expect from a modern Ohio brewery. The menu description on the same site still centers Neapolitan-style wood-fired pizza with sandwiches, shareables, salads, and desserts, which matches how Cleveland press has talked about the kitchen from day one.
A dark beer pulled through a row of Masthead tap handles. Photo: Masthead Brewing Co.
Pizza, salads, and the 2018 dining review
Petryszyn’s Cleveland Magazine guide, filed November 2017, is a compact picture of how Masthead wanted to be read in its first year: a lesser-trafficked downtown corner, sandblasted brick, bell columns, about eighteen beers on tap in that article’s moment, and over-the-bar ordering for chef-driven pies. She quoted Pelechaty on barrel-aged stout picking up silkier texture from bourbon wood and singled out Midwest Red IPA as a beer that still balanced hop and malt, noting its early Great American Beer Festival bronze in the same story.
Mark Meszoros, writing for the Morning Journal and News-Herald in March 2018, approached the room as a diner and beer fan rather than as an opening-week documentarian. He described an industrial, high-ceiling space that feels clean and utilitarian, warned that hard surfaces make the room loud, and noted Masthead’s own claim of seating for three hundred with guests spread between the long bar and large picnic tables. He walked through the same counter-service rhythm Scene previewed, with buzzers and a pickup counter, and he called the menu essentially pizza and appetizers with a few salads, which matched what he saw on the board at the time.
His beer notes were specific to that winter visit: a $10 flight with an upcharge for barrel-aged pours, a Bourbon BA Winter Stout that stuck in his memory for aroma and strength, a “New England Double IPA” called Flat Earth at eight percent ABV, a triple IPA called Juggerhop at eleven percent, and a piney Sleigh All Day Red IPA at 7.3 percent, plus a witbier outside his own tastes that he still figured was probably a crowd favorite. On the food side he praised an everything-seasoned pretzel with an unexpected pimento cheese dip, called the goat cheese stuffed dates “delicious” despite a minimal menu description, and said he preferred the BBQ Pork white pizza to the Spanish Chorizo red pie he split with a friend. The review is candid about the limited scope, the noise, and the lack of full table service, and it still ends with him planning a return when he is downtown and wants a beer with a bite.
Voices from beer blogs and the tap line today
John’s Beer Blog took a detailed run at Robot Santa’s Christmas Ale in December 2024, a seasonal Masthead ties out to Untappd on its site. The writer walked through spice, honey, and citrus on the nose, then spent several paragraphs on a smoky note they compared to hot dog or Rauchbier character, and scored the beer 6.5 out of 10 with a clear disclaimer that the gift four-pack was appreciated even though the profile was not their favorite for a Christmas ale. That piece is useful less as a verdict on one seasonal than as an example of how much attention Masthead’s packaged oddities can pull from enthusiasts who sit down with a single can and a notebook.
Between Scene’s opening list, Meszoros’s 2018 flight, Cleveland Magazine’s early tap snapshot, and the long chalk of current styles on Masthead’s own marketing photography, you can see a through-line: lagers and IPAs in the spotlight, barrel-aged dark beer when you want something slower, and a kitchen that was always meant to feed a taproom crowd rather than replace a steakhouse. The photo Masthead runs of its back bar shows case stacks of colorful cans, merchandise shelves, and typed beer boards listing everything from hazy IPAs to barrel-aged stouts with explicit ABVs, which matches how the brewery talks about itself online even as the exact lineup rotates.
Staff pouring a hazy pour from Masthead’s long tap run. Photo: Masthead Brewing Co.
Sitting with the story
What pulls the place together in my head is the combination Trattner captured in 2017 and Meszoros double-checked a year later: a historic dealership volume, beer made in sight of the bar, pizza from a serious oven, and a downtown location that asks for honest pricing and quick service. The National Register file for the Bryant Building reminds you the walls were already old before Masthead arrived, BeerAdvocate’s 2018 list reminds you out-of-state judges noticed the beer almost immediately, and the GABF PDFs give you hard proof that Midwest Red IPA and Augenblick have stayed competitive in national judging. Scene’s opening quotes about neighborhood breweries and Luther’s West Coast search still read as the honest answer to why this team picked Cleveland, and Meszoros’s pretzel-and-dates order is the detail I reach for when I want to explain how the food program shows up in practice. From the first walkthroughs through Meszoros’s 2018 visit, the reporting keeps the brewery, taproom, and kitchen in the same sentence.
Sources
About Us | Our History. Masthead Brewing Co. https://mastheadbrewingco.com/about-us (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Masthead Brewing Co. (homepage taproom and awards copy). Masthead Brewing Co. https://mastheadbrewingco.com/ (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Media Kit and Marketing. Masthead Brewing Co. https://mastheadbrewingco.com/marketing (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Trattner, Douglas. “First Look: Masthead Brewing, Opening Tuesday.” Cleveland Scene. January 10, 2017. https://www.clevescene.com/food-drink/first-look-masthead-brewing-opening-tuesday-5010391 (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Staff Writer. “Masthead Brewing opens Tuesday in Cleveland.” Akron Beacon Journal. January 16, 2017. https://eu.beaconjournal.com/story/entertainment/dining/2017/01/16/masthead-brewing-opens-tuesday-in/10761819007/ (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Petryszyn, Kelly. “Beer Guide: Masthead Brewing Co.” Cleveland Magazine. November 20, 2017. https://clevelandmagazine.com/food-drink/masthead-brewing-co (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Meszoros, Mark. “Cleveland’s Masthead Brewing Co. puts terrific beer before solid but limited food | Restaurant review.” The Morning Journal / The News-Herald. March 8, 2018. https://www.morningjournal.com/2018/03/08/clevelands-masthead-brewing-co-puts-terrific-beer-before-solid-but-limited-food-restaurant-review/ (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Babbitt, Bill. “50 of the Best New Breweries.” BeerAdvocate Magazine (online article). May 2018. https://www.beeradvocate.com/articles/17226/50-of-the-best-new-breweries/ (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Great American Beer Festival. 2017 GABF Winners. PDF. http://media.philly.com/documents/2017-GABF-Winners.pdf (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Great American Beer Festival. 2018 GABF Winners List. PDF. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/gabf/wp-content/uploads/GABF18-Winners-List.pdf (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Great American Beer Festival. 2020 GABF Winners List. PDF. https://gabf.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/GABF2020-Winners-List.pdf (Accessed April 21, 2026).
Great American Beer Festival. 2021 GABF Winners List. PDF. https://cdn.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/GABF21-Winners-List.pdf (Accessed April 21, 2026).
National Register of Historic Places. “Bryant Building (NRIS 14001051).” National Park Service NPGallery. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/14001051 (Accessed April 21, 2026).
John’s Beer Blog. “12/21/24: Masthead Brewing Company’s Robot Santa’s Christmas Ale.” December 21, 2024. https://www.johnlikesbeer.com/2024/12/122124-masthead-brewing-companys-robot.html (Accessed April 21, 2026).