Restaurant:
Get To Know Us
Home is where the heart [beer] is!
207A Howard St--Original Pub 1.0
Click to view tour of original 207A Pub location.
The short: Here at Beards, we are a bunch of up north beer weirdos who love our Petoskey community.
The long(ish):
It would be easy to say Beards Brewery opened its doors because owners Ben Slocum & Peter Manthei loved beer. And that would, in fact, be true. But beer has never been the entire vision.
Ben & Peter grew up in Petoskey. One day they left, they travelled, raced cars, studied English…somewhere in there they learned how to brew beer, too; but after all that, they came back home.
They both realized they wanted to build something for themselves, but also something for their community — a hometown brewery; a gathering space where people could meet, converse, discover, explore. And drink beer, duh.
The Howard Street Beards is infamous when talked about today — people are proud to say they had a beer there down that not-so-secret corridor. While it was small in size (49 person capacity!) it was huge in all of our beer-loving hearts. It was what Peter and Ben wanted, and it felt good that the community agreed.
Howard Street was open from August 2012 until April 2017. This is the place where beers like Deez Nutz and Citranity! were first brewed and enjoyed. Where Open Mic originated. Where there was a Back to the Future II Party to celebrate the time-travel on October 21, 2015. Where locals gathered every Sunday in the off season for a Potluck.
Howard Street taught Downtown Petoskey how to love beer. And it taught Ben & Peter even more about the community they held so close.
215 E Lake St.- North of Normal
By 2017, the beer world was INSANE with growth and new trends, popularity, and possibility. In little ol’ Petoskey, Ben & Peter had to admit they had outgrown the Howard St. space.
Bittersweet but exciting, we closed our doors in April 2017 and opened them in our new building in June 2017 just a few blocks away on Lake St.
To match the demand and excitement of craft beer growth, Ben & Peter invested in a space where their vision could grow. Beards went from the small, hardest-to-find hidden alleyway to the most visible building on the corner of Downtown Petoskey, butting up to US-31 where everyone could see us.
Since our new adventure began at Lake Street, our current home, Beards has been on a rollercoaster ride. Fun thrills like expanding our tap list, adding food, building a patio overlooking Little Traverse Bay, opening our Root Cellar beer lounge, expanding our reach in Michigan — were huge victories for Team Beards.
But Lake Street has also survived some huge challenges — mostly during the COVID 19 pandemic and the aftermath, which brought big changes to craft beer and hospitality in general.
Team Beards rose to these challenges, our mantra these last years: “we’ll make it work.” We did it by adding spirits and cider to our alcoholic offerings. We transitioned to a rotating food menu to better fit our Michigan seasons. We built partnerships to create a stronger, sustainable, and happier community. We launched late night hours and mug club field trips — feeding both our locals and visiting consumers with new experiences and fun spaces.
All in all, after 13+ years, we can say we’re proud to still stand for good beer and good community in Petoskey.
Stop by and watch us brew, catch a million dollar sunset, and enjoy a pint (or two).
Cheers!
Check out inside our original 207A Howard home (we’ve moved to 215 East Lake Street)!
Click the arrows to venture inside.