Petty Thieves opens near uptown Charlotte with seasonal beers (and a secret room)
For most, 10 years at a job is cause for celebration.
For Ted Rosenau, it was cause for an existential crisis.
“It’s that feeling that you’re running out of days,” Rosenau said. “Do you want to put those days in helping someone else build what they want to build, or do you want to build something that you want to bring into creation?”
Rosenau decided on the latter, giving up his longtime career as a mechanical engineer to start Petty Thieves Brewing Co., a name he incorporated back in 2016. He spent years searching for a location before finally finding one at The Shop, a renovated industrial building located about a mile south of Camp North End off Graham Street.
On Sept. 19, Petty Thieves Brewing Co. will open the doors to a taproom that’s brand new, yet filled with thrifted finds, well-worn leather couches, reclaimed wood, vintage framed prints and other nods to Charlotte’s past.
“I don’t know how else to describe it other than a love letter to Charlotte,” Rosenau said. “Really, the design intent is to bring back to life some of these Charlotte institutions that we’ve lost to time and development. This place was built to feel old. We designed it to feel like it’s been here forever, like it just sprouted out of the ground and has always been here.”
Rosenau describes it as “a country club for the common man,” drawing inspiration from churches, social clubs and old-school cigar lounges. The team members were inspired by speakeasies as well, and since they didn’t have a natural speakeasy element, they decided to create one. Concealed behind a rotating bookcase is a hidden room, so obscured that the team had to actually point it out to visitors at a recent friends and family night.
Inspirational decor
The team did most of the buildout themselves, with design help from Cluck Design Collaborative. Rosenau has an interest in history and has spent a lot of time researching old Charlotte and some of its long-forgotten gathering places.
“These are places that we’ve never been fortunate enough to experience, but yet we wanted to bring back to life,” Rosenau said. “And of course having not ever really experienced them, we assembled them kind of with our imaginations and sense of what it should look and feel like. There’s this big dose of nostalgia where we’re trying to build something that probably never existed, and trying to bring it back to life.”
Outside of old Charlotte, many of Rosenau’s influences run from the artistic (Vincent van Gogh) to the literary (Herman Melville). And he’s transparent about how all of these people and places have influenced him. The brewery’s name itself is based around the idea that “art is theft.”
“Everybody starts off in imitation before they find their own voice, and we were no different,” Rosenau said. “We happily pillaged, just taking inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. And then, like a sponge, you get full — and when you wring yourself out, it’s this blend of influences that really kind of makes you who you are and how you create.”
Rosenau cites Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and its founder, Ken Grossman, as one of his biggest inspirations in the world of beer. While he’s a longtime homebrewer who first took up brewing after a college roommate’s (failed) experiments with a Mr. Beer kit, he’ll be entrusting the brewery’s seven-barrel brewhouse to Ryan Walsh, who brewed at Gonzo’s BiggDogg Brewing Co. in Michigan before coming to Charlotte (where he brewed briefly with Edge City Brewery).
Petty Thieves beer
Don’t expect to see the same core beers on tap at all times. The smaller size of the brewhouse will allow Petty Thieves to keep things fresh. The plan is to brew with local and “sometimes weird” ingredients, allowing them to continue the kind of brewing the team enjoyed doing at the homebrew level.
“We’ll brew for the season, because romantically that’s what we love about homebrewing,” Rosenau said. “The season sets the tone for the beer, and the beer sets the tone for the season.”
On opening weekend, you can find: Dilettante, a nectarine saison; Cutting Tongues, a raspberry mojito sour ale; From My Kölsch Dead Hands, a dry-hopped Kölsch; Best Mate, an American pale ale; Love From The Mothership, an American IPA; Cirque de Somnambulants, an espresso session porter served on nitro; Basking In The Glow Of Self Approval, a New England-style IPA; and The Burden Of Boredom, a boysenberry saison.
While the brewery wants to shy away from flagship beers, there are a few recipes they’ve been tweaking over the years that could end up in cans as early as next month. Those are Andalusia, a tropical IPA; Difficult Arithmetic, an orange juice sour IPA; and a robust porter (name to be determined).
In addition to the taproom (and its secret room), the brewery also has an outside patio with a view of uptown Charlotte. Petty Thieves doesn’t have a kitchen, but it will work with food trucks to have options available when it’s open. The brewery will open its doors this Saturday at noon. After that, Rosenau expects the brewery to be open from around 4-10 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays — and to open a little earlier and stay open later on Fridays and Saturdays.
Petty Thieves Brewing Co.
413 Dalton Ave., Suite B
Instagram: @pettythievesbrewing
