BETHLEHEM, PA - They’re bringing a brewery to their home base. A trio of Lehigh Valley locals are turning an 8 thousand square foot former parking garage into a brand-new Bethlehem brewery and for two of them, solid experience overseas might just be the ‘IT’ factor that sets them apart.
“Our entire system we had PLCs and pumps and motors and drives you know all that,” says Jordan Serulneck, “so technically I’ve been working on this stuff for years without even knowing I was going to be in the brewing industry, working on missiles and stuff.” After a six-year tour with the U.S. Navy, where he oversaw all maintenance personnel, records, and operations of multiple crucial computerized ship systems, Jordan Serulneck returned to his home in the Lehigh Valley to marry his leadership and operations management experience to his passion of superior craft beer. The Emmaus High School alum says joining the navy was a way to get out of the Lehigh Valley, but traveling around the world has proven there’s no place quite like home. Serulneck explains, “[I] spent six years in the navy, stationed all over the country, deployments all over the planet, which is where I developed a love for beer in the process and doing it as a hobby. I helped one of my friends open a brewery in Long Beach and came back to Pennsylvania, bought a house, got married, did all the adult things they tell you to do and then I said I want to start my own business. The Lehigh Valley is exploding. To be able to be apart of the revitalization of the Lehigh Valley is amazing.”
As for Aaron Nelson, he’s a highly decorated war veteran and purple heart recipient. The six-foot-seven vet comes to the Seven Sirens family after a tour in Afghanistan that had him return home in a wheelchair with his back broken. But for Aaron, it’s the brotherhood of the armed forces that drew him to teaming up with Serulneck and Divers for a new type of mission. “September 11, 2011 I got blown up in an IED, broke my back in four places, woke up in a hospital in Germany on my birthday. So that was it for me. Then I healed up, came home, they retired me medically, obviously, and I kind of love the comradery, the brotherhood and atmosphere, the work atmosphere when you have likeminded people that makes you so much more productive in what you’re doing,” explains Nelson, “after all those years, I’m back and I was given this opportunity and I just ran with it.”
Joshua Divers on the other hand, is an avid beer aficionado, as well as a seasoned brew master. The home-brewer and Salisbury High School grad’s award-winning beer was, and continues to be, featured at multiple beer festivals in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Today, he’s the head of brewing for Seven Sirens. “I did the Sam Adams homebrew competition which is nationwide. I made it in the top five for that. That’s actually where I met Jordan when I was out promoting myself for one of the levels of the competition; just going to different breweries and bars,” says Divers; “It just became an obsession; a fun hobby that took over the whole garage pretty much. I grow some of my own hops in the backyard, I have my kids pick some hops every fall.”
Now the trio is giving new life to the Seven Sirens building at 27 Broadway on South Side Bethlehem. They say this was once the Lehigh Valley’s largest retail space, now, this team envisions the half a million-dollar project as an indoor-outdoor beer garden style brewery for homestyle connections. They say they’re not in the beer or food industry. They describe themselves as being in the human connection industry. “Nowadays everyone is busy and on social media and on their phones, nobody sits down and actually spends time with each other,” explains Divers, “so we are just trying to create a good space where you can enjoy each other's company.”
The team plans to source organic ingredients from local farmers to support their business and community. The Seven Sirens team says their goal is to be a part of the renaissance of their home, Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Serulneck says, “This is our home, these are our friends, our family, everyone knows everyone, everywhere we go somebody grew up with us or somebody knows somebody. It’s been second nature to us to connect with all these different people.”
Once complete, Seven Sirens Brewing Company’s Broadway location will house a 7-barrel brewery and tap room with a 20 tap draft system with a wide variety of beers from light to dark. The brewery will be able to host more than 300 guests and feed them with Bethlehem’s finest food trucks through already existing industrial sized windows. For a sneak peek and taste, Seven Sirens is partnering with SteelStacks and ArtsQuest for a local brewery dinner showcase series on June 1st. “We want to have that relationship with everybody,” explains Nelson, “They can come to us, I can come to them. That’s how the community is going to grow, and this is our community so why not make it the best you can?
Tickets for that event are available through Steelstacks.org. As for the beer garden brewery? Jordan, Josh and Aaron plan to open by August.
Seven Sirens Brewing
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Seven Sirens Brewing Company in Bethlehem, PA
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