FERNDALE, Mich. (WWJ) -- You won't find a TV at Urbanrest Brewing Co. in Ferndale, but what you will find is an eclectic, wide range of beer, good conversation, a community atmosphere and some history.
When Zach Typinski graduated from home brewer to co-founder of Urbanrest in 2015, he wanted to create a place where the local community could get their beer fix and try a variety of new beers, all while enjoying conversation -- a "third place," if you will.
"There’s home, and there’s work, then there’s your third place, which is your community gathering spot," Typinski told WWJ's Zach Clark. "We don’t have TVs, so people can have conversations with each other, so they can engage with people they know or might not know."
Urbanrest -- which gets its name from the original name of the land where it sits until Ferndale officially became a village in 1918 -- was a bare-bones operation when Typinski and his wife first started. They dug deep into Michigan's deep dairy industry roots and used reclaimed dairy equipment to begin their open fermentation operation.
"We actually started out without a single purpose-made brewing vessel at all in the entire building. We didn’t have kegs when we started, so we’ve grown up quite a bit from there and now we’ve got kegs and whatnot and some conical fermenters and some things, but we still have the open fermenters in the mix," Typinski said.
Now they have a mix of open and closed fermentation tanks, but he says the ethos of Urbanrest comes from his fascination with yeast-driven products.
"I’ve always been very attached to yeast-driven beers and in order to get that yeast to act in a more free and kind of ‘outgoing environment,’ I found that open fermentation was the way to go. As I was home brewing and starting to do some experiments and things like that, I really was drawn to that," he said.
Typinski, who brewed all of his own beer for his wedding before opening Urbanrest, says Ferndale's eclectic culture inspires him to make all different styles of beer from across the globe. That includes a traditional Czech dark -- the Ken's Tmavé Pivo -- a German marzen and much more, all with his own flair.
"We are rooted in what I like to coin as a 'classical new-age style.' We love tradition and that’s where the ethos for that open fermentation came because that’s the way things were fermented for millennia, basically – since the foundations of civilization – so to have that kind of old-world mentality but also focus on critical processes and ingredient sourcing and things, we’ve got our own little modern twist on things."
Located on Wolcott Avenue near Woodward Heights Boulevard, just outside of downtown Ferndale, Urbanrest often has a steady flow of food trucks, allowing customers to bring their grub inside the beer hall-style taproom.
For more information about Urbanrest Brewing Co., visit their website and listen to Zach's full conversation with the head brewer below.