Berwick Brewing Company: A Historic Riverfront Brewery Reborn — And the Pizza That’s Back on Front Street

I walked in, ordered, paid the bill, and reviewed the pizza like every other customer. No heads-up. No comps.

Some review visits I plan for months. This one I finally did after telling myself for years I’d get around to it.

Berwick Brewing Company at 328 West Front Street in Berwick is one of those local institutions I somehow never made it to during its long original run. When founder Tom Clark put the brewery up for sale in 2025 and then reluctantly closed the doors on July 15, 2025 after three sales fell through, I had a real “how did I miss this” moment. Beloved local brewery. Riverside biergarten. Signature thin-crust pizzas that reportedly sold upwards of 300 pies a day in the brewery’s final weeks. And I’d never made the trip.

So when Megan and Vaughn Welch — a local Berwick couple, longtime patrons, and Megan a former kitchen manager at the brewery herself — purchased the business and grand-reopened it on July 31, 2026, I told myself the same thing I always tell myself when I catch a break like this: no time like the present.

I showed up unannounced, ordered pizza, tasted through the two most-recommended pies from a reader poll, and only then introduced myself, met the owners, and got a full tour of the complex. What I found was a historic brewery in genuinely good hands, and thin-crust pizza with real character and personality that lives up to the legend.

A Massive, Historic Riverfront Complex

Let me start with the room itself, because Berwick Brewing Company is way bigger, more historic, and more architecturally interesting than I was prepared for.

Walk in the front door and the bar hits you first — the classic brewery-taproom greeting. But that’s just the beginning. As I got the tour, I found:

Multiple dining areas stretched throughout the historic building
A biergarten in the classic German brewery tradition
Multiple expansive outdoor dining areas overlooking the Susquehanna River and the mountains beyond
Warehouse and event space with real bones and history

The riverfront views alone would justify the drive. The Susquehanna curling past the outdoor seating, the mountains in the distance — this is the kind of setting that turns a good beer and a good pizza into a genuinely memorable afternoon.

The building itself carries real history. It once housed a bakery (an ancestor of the new Vaughn’s Cream Ale the Welches are brewing today, named directly after that original bakery), and the whole complex feels like it’s absorbed decades of Berwick community life. This is a place with soul.

Meeting the Owners: A Family Preserving the Traditions

After I finished eating and did my pizza review, I introduced myself and got to spend some time with the new ownership. What I heard was exactly what I hoped I would hear.

Megan and Vaughn Welch are Berwick natives who dreamed about owning this brewery years ago but didn’t have the capital at the time. Now they do. And their approach is what any longtime patron of a legacy business would want to hear: preserve the traditions, protect the recipes, and honor everything Berwick Brewing has meant to the community, while investing heavily in the infrastructure, options, and experience to carry it forward.

They’re bringing back the classic beer staples — Berwick Lager, Front Street Wheat, Dry Hop IPA, Irish Red, Grumpy Bill’s Porter — plus that new Vaughn’s Cream Ale that ties directly back to the building’s bakery history. They’re planning to continue the legendary Oktoberfest celebration with seasonal German food, live bands, and the iconic stein-holding contest. And they’re pouring their own capital, blood, sweat, and tears into a historic Berwick landmark that could easily have been lost.

I won’t divulge the specific plans they shared on the tour, but I can tell you the overarching theme: making this a comfortable community space where people — including families — come, stay a while, and hang out. Vaughn spoke lovingly about a family that comes and stays for hours playing dominos, and a group of seniors who visit to play cards all evening. Those are the kinds of stories that tell you everything about what a place is trying to be.

The passion is real. The commitment to preserve what Berwick Brewing already was, while making it better, is exactly the ownership handoff a beloved local institution deserves. As a NEPA-region pizza-and-food guy who cares about local institutions being cared for, watching this happen at Berwick Brewing was one of the more heartening ownership stories I’ve come across in a long time.

The Order: Reader-Poll Top Picks

Because I wanted to eat what the community loves, I ran a reader poll before this visit and ordered the two most-recommended pies:

The Curd & Jager — the top pick from my readers
The Graham Standard — a popular reader recommendation, and my second choice after being warned off the “Steve-O Inferno” by both a friendly patron and the bartender due to its heat level (I do like spicy, but I was sharing with the family and had a long drive home)

Both pies shared the same round, thin, screen-baked crust — well done on top, soft and foldable on the bottom, with a nice crispiness around the edge. On these pies, the crust is the vessel — the toppings do the heavy lifting, and the crust’s job is to bring those flavors to your mouth without getting in the way. It does that job well.

The Curd & Jager: A Beer-Hall Flavor Bomb Worth Voting For

The Curd & Jager was the top pick from my readers, and I understand why.

This is a thin-crust pie built around two unusual and distinctly Berwick Brewing toppings: fresh cheese curds and German-style landjager sausage.

The Cheese Curds

Fresh cheese curds aren’t dramatically different from regular whole-milk mozzarella at a fundamental level, but the eating experience is not the same. On this pie, the curds:

Were less stretchy than typical shredded mozzarella
Had a slightly chewier texture
Delivered a mild, milky character with a bit of salt

That salt and chew give the pie a real snap-back quality that a shredded mozz couldn’t reproduce. It’s the kind of cheese texture that makes you slow down and pay attention to each bite.

The Landjager

Landjager is a smoked German beef stick, sliced thin and applied to the pizza. If you haven’t had it, here’s the honest reference point: it reminded me of the time I made a homemade pizza and topped it with thinly sliced Slim Jim beef jerky. That’s not a knock — it’s a compliment. The landjager brings a deep, salty, smoky, meaty jerky-like character that cheese curds and pizza sauce would never generate on their own.

The Sauce

The sauce on the Curd & Jager was quite flavorful and well-seasoned — leaning more tangy than sweet, which is exactly the direction you want a pizza sauce to lean when it’s sharing the pie with rich smoked meat and salty curds. Sweet sauce would fight the landjager. Tangy sauce plays into it.

The Verdict

Put it all together and you have a pie with a deep, rich, salty, meaty flavor profile that is unmistakably designed to be paired with beer. This is a beer-hall pizza in the best sense of the phrase — bold, satisfying, savory, and finished in a way that leaves you reaching for a frosty brew.

Really satisfying. Left me wanting a cold one. And in a brewery-restaurant that has been serving hand-crafted lagers, wheats, IPAs, and porters on this same site for years, that’s the point.

The Graham Standard: A Fra Diavolo–Style Pie With Real Kick

The Graham Standard was the popular reader pick I ordered after being talked down from the Steve-O Inferno. It’s built with basil, hot sauce, sausage, and cheese curds — a spicy-savory-cheesy combination that on paper reads like a solid crowd-pleaser, and in practice absolutely delivered.

The Sauce

I really liked the sauce on this pie. It reminded me of a fra diavolo-style sauce — bright, spicy, savory, tomato-forward, and layered with real character. Fra diavolo is one of my favorite sauce styles when it shows up on pizza, and Berwick Brewing’s Graham Standard uses that spicy-marinara profile as its base.

Sauce Plus Sausage

Fra diavolo–style sauce paired with spicy Italian sausage is a natural marriage — the sauce’s heat pushes the sausage’s fat and spice forward, and the sausage’s salty savory character grounds the sauce so the pie doesn’t tip too spicy. The whole thing lands spicy enough to be exciting, cheesy enough to feel comforting, and salty enough to definitely want another beer.

Same Crust, Different Personality

The crust on the Graham Standard was the same thin, screen-baked, well-done-top, soft-foldable-bottom, crispy-edge base as the Curd & Jager. This pizza was less about the crust and more about the toppings — the crust as the vessel to deliver those bright spicy-savory-cheesy flavors to your mouth.

This pizza also left me thirsty. In this room, on this river, on this Front Street, in front of a taproom that’s been rebuilding since July — that’s a very good place to be.

Pizzaiolo’s Notes 🍕

Cheese curds on pizza are underused in NEPA. The chew, mild milkiness, and slight salt from fresh curds create a completely different eating experience than shredded mozzarella, and Berwick Brewing has built two of its signature pies around them.
Beer-hall pizza is a real category — pies engineered to pair with lager, wheat, and porter rather than to stand alone. Berwick Brewing’s menu clearly thinks in that direction, and it works. Deep salty smoky meaty pies + beer = the whole ecosystem in one bite.
A screen-baked thin crust with well-done top + soft foldable bottom + crispy edge is the right engineering answer to a brewery-restaurant pizza program. It’s not trying to be the star. It’s the vessel that carries big flavors to your palate without getting in the way.
Tangy sauce on the Curd & Jager, fra diavolo–style sauce on the Graham Standard — two very different sauce personalities on the same crust is a smart sign of a kitchen that thinks about how each pizza should eat.
Ownership matters. Watching Megan and Vaughn Welch step into a beloved historic property with humility, respect for the traditions, and real investment plans is exactly the kind of ownership handoff a community institution deserves.

Final Thoughts

Berwick Brewing Company is back on Front Street. The pizza is solid in composition and execution, big on flavor, big on passion, and full of local flare. The Curd & Jager is a top-of-the-reader-poll beer-hall pie for a reason. The Graham Standard is a fra diavolo–style sauce lover’s dream. And the whole operation — the historic complex, the riverfront biergarten, the ownership philosophy — is the kind of place NEPA should be showing up for.

If you’re anywhere in the Berwick / Bloomsburg / Nescopeck / Susquehanna Valley corridor — make the trip to 328 West Front Street. Order a pie. Order a Berwick Lager or a Grumpy Bill’s Porter. Grab a seat where you can see the river. And stay a while. That’s what this place is now built for.

What I’d Order Next Time

The Steve-O Inferno — I dodged it this trip, but I need to know
Whatever new seasonal pizza the kitchen rolls out under the new ownership
A flight of the returning classics — Berwick Lager, Front Street Wheat, Dry Hop IPA, Irish Red, Grumpy Bill’s Porter, and the new Vaughn’s Cream Ale
The full Oktoberfest experience in September — German food, live bands, stein-holding contest

My Takeaways

🍕 A historic riverfront Berwick institution reborn under passionate local ownership
🏛️ Multiple dining areas, biergarten, and expansive outdoor seating with Susquehanna River + mountain views
👨‍👩‍👧 The Welch family bringing back beer staples, signature pizzas, and Oktoberfest tradition
🍕 Round, thin, screen-baked crust — well-done top, soft foldable bottom, crispy edge — a vessel for big flavors
🧀 Fresh cheese curds delivering a chewier, less stretchy, milky-salty alternative to shredded mozzarella
🥩 Smoked landjager beef stick that reads like an elevated jerky topping
🍅 Tangy pizza sauce on the Curd & Jager that plays perfectly against smoked meat and curds
🌶️ A fra diavolo–style hot sauce on the Graham Standard that pushes spicy sausage forward beautifully
🍺 Beer-hall pizza engineered to pair with the lagers, wheats, and porters on tap
🫶 Real, humble, community-first ownership investing in a landmark rather than reinventing it

Have you been back to Berwick Brewing since the reopening? Which signature pizza should I try next — the Steve-O Inferno, or a curveball rec I’m not thinking of? Drop your recommendations in the comments.

Pizza is Similar to:

Other beer-hall / brewery pizza programs engineered to pair with lagers and porters rather than stand alone
Cheese-curd-based specialty pies where the curd’s chew and mild milkiness carry the eating experience
Fra diavolo–style sauce builds where the sauce itself is the heat and the sausage is the anchor

Rating Table

A quick note before the table: the writeup above is my gut read from the visit. The scorecard below is my technical scoring on the standard six-category rubric — locked in 24 hours later. Both are honest.

Gut Ranking (in the moment)

The Curd & Jager — the top reader pick and the pie that most captures what Berwick Brewing is doing
The Graham Standard — a fra diavolo–style spicy sausage pie that made me thirstier for a beer than any pizza has in a long time

Technical Scorecard

Technical Rank	Pizza Ordered (Round Thin Crust)	Visit	Crust	Sauce	Cheese	Taste	Crispy/Cooked	Value	Overall
1	The Graham Standard (Basil, Hot Sauce, Spicy Sausage, Cheese Curds)	August 2026	6.9	7.3	7.7	7.8	7.1	7.0	7.3
2	The Curd & Jager (Cheese Curds, Landjager Sausage)	August 2026	6.9	7.1	7.7	7.6	7.0	7.0	7.2

Interesting outcome: the technical scorecard flipped my gut ranking by 0.1 points. In the moment, I loved the Curd & Jager — the beer-hall flavor bomb, the landjager, the tangy sauce, the cheese curds — and it was the top reader pick going in. But when I sat down 24 hours later and worked through the six-category rubric, the Graham Standard’s fra diavolo–style sauce (7.3) and spicy sausage flavor combination (7.8 Taste) edged out the Curd & Jager on Sauce and Taste. Everything else on the rubric was essentially identical: same 6.9 Crust, same 7.7 Cheese, same 7.0 Value on both pies (the crust, cheese, and price structure are shared across the whole pizza menu). The two pies are effectively twins on execution and different on flavor personality — and the flavor personality that scored highest technically was the fra diavolo–and-sausage combo of the Graham Standard. I stand by my gut ranking of what I enjoyed most in the moment (Curd & Jager), and I stand by the technical scores I locked in 24 hours later (Graham Standard by a hair). Both pies are the same tier, both are honest calls, and both are worth ordering.

Berwick Brewing Company
328 West Front Street, Berwick, PA
Columbia County · Susquehanna River waterfront
Historic brewery reopened July 31, 2026 under new ownership (Megan & Vaughn Welch)
Taproom · Biergarten · Multiple indoor dining rooms · Expansive riverfront outdoor seating · Signature thin-crust pizzas · Craft beer program

Speaking of great pizza sauce — Berwick Brewing’s tangy Curd & Jager sauce and fra diavolo–style Graham Standard sauce are two of the more flavorful house pizza sauces I’ve eaten this year. See how they stack up against the rest of the field in our NEPA Pizza Review coverage. And if you’re building pizza at home, our Amazon affiliate picks are linked on the site — every click helps keep NEPA Pizza Review independent and ad-light.

NEPA Pizza Review