Marc Schulz from Prison City Brewing

Tell us a little about Prison City Brewing. Whats new?

Prison City is ultimately a 20 year dream come true for my wife Dawn and I. We met each other up in Lake Placid, New York and got married in 2000. She was a restaurant owner and I managed the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery. We moved down to this area in 2001 when I started a job for Samuel Adams.

I had always dreamed of opening a brewpub. Dawn was also a fan of craft beer, in fact our first date was a home brew. We moved here constantly thinking of starting a brew pub, and wondering how to do it. We wondered if the area was ready for it, which it wasn’t at the time. Then that whole explosion of craft beer happened. While the explosion was happening, we kept looking the map of local breweries and there was always a gap here in Cayuga County. Then sure enough, five breweries arrived almost overnight. It all happened within the same year of 2014. So there’s Prison City Pub and Brewery, The Good Shepherds Brewing Co., Lunkenheimer Craft Brewing Co. in Weedsport, Aurora Brewing Co. in Aurora, and Next Chapter Brewpub here in Auburn.

Auburn is known as “The Prison City”. As we sit here and talk, you can see the prison is literally two blocks away. It’s not the greatest nickname, and we danced around with a bunch of different names, but we just kept coming back to it. It just seemed like the right name. There is a local band called The Prison City Rockers, there’s a car club called The Prison City Ramblers, then there’s also a Prison City motorcycle group made up of a bunch of the guys in the fire department. So a lot of different factors culminated into the name choice. It took us 14 years to realize the dream but ultimately we found this spot that we just fell in love with.

So you guys have this brewpub and brewery in downtown Auburn. You are expanding production with a new brewery here in town. How many beers do you usually have on tap?

It depends on the time of year. Right now, counting our collaborations with Brewery Ommegang, and Thin Man Brewery, we have 15. I’m counting the collaborations as house beers even though we brew them at those breweries. As the summer goes on, that number goes down because of the busy summer in the Finger Lakes. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, where tourism is at it’s peak, people keep coming through until eventually we can’t keep up. That number might drop down to 10-12 beers. In February, we’re all kind of staring at each other, the food coolers packed with kegs, the keg coolers packed with kegs, we’re packed to the seems. Then here we are in June and both of them are empty. We were laughing the other day because it was like that bunk beds scene in Step Brothers where they’re like, “There’s so much more room for activities!” That was the big joke yesterday.

It’s really cool what your presence has done to Auburn and this little street. That’s what I think is so powerful about the craft beer industry, it kind of transforms towns. Look at some of these breweries in Vermont like The Alchemist or Hill Farmstead Brewery. Shaun Hill is living in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, intentionally in the middle of nowhere, and people flock up from New York City to stand in line for hours. 

Ya! We’ve been there, dragged our kids there. That was kind of our hope and intent with opening this brewpub. In all honesty, we were trying to model it after the Prohibition Pig in Waterbury, Vermont. And it’s true, with the other two breweries in town, this town is drastically different than it was about six years ago. It’s the same for a lot of cities throughout Upstate New York. They were old industrial towns, manufacturing towns, now it’s all gone so we have to rely on tourism. We were lucky. We did not anticipate the success we have had. If we had, we would not have opened with a five barrel brewery. We would have found a different space and found a ten barrel. We did over 120,000 guests last year and we have forecast about 65% come from outside this immediate area. They’re coming from Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. Since it’s such a tourism driven place, we get a ton of traffic coming through here. All awards aside, the greatest reward we have been given is seeing people coming through the door every day. 

I see you have the Riot Run coming up in October. Are you guys going to be at any beer festivals this summer?

Oh, probably too many. We were just at the Rochester Real Beer Expo. Our friend Joe McBane from Tap & Mallet organizes that. We have participated in that every year we’ve been open. Joe is a good friend who invited us. On June 22 we will be in Buffalo for The New York State Brewers Association Collaboration Event – Buffalo Brewers Festival. It will be at Canalside, which is a beautiful part of Buffalo. They are another city that has made a huge comeback and craft beer has a lot to do with it. In the meantime, our brewers will be down at Other Half Brewing for Green City, a big IPA fest. We are flattered to be invited to that. Then at the end of the summer, we’re doing the Beer Advocate IPA Fest in Brooklyn. I think there’s a couple others sprinkled in there. For such a small brewery, we do send our beer out a little bit but it’s mostly just about promoting the Prison City name, hopefully generating awareness so when people come through Upstate New York, we’re on their radar. 

So you have awesome food and beer, of course. What are some of your other favorite drinks or breweries from the area?

We’re really excited about Other Half Brewing being right down the road in Bloomfield. I went there when it was Nedloh Brewing and we think it’s just a beautiful little spot. We love going down to Aurora Brewing Co.. I actually worked at Ithaca Beer Company for a few years, so that is sentimental to me. We love Ithaca. We like traveling around to different spots, usually involving food and drink. When we go to Ithaca it’s usually for a hike at one of the waterfalls. Dawn’s mom lives on the west side of Owasco Lake, so we spend a lot of time on the dock or on friends’ boats. We love the wine industry of course. We have done a ton of wine tours over the 20 years that we have lived here. There is a lot to do here. It requires a bit of travel because it’s spread out, but we love getting over to Skaneateles, Geneva, and Rochester. Everything for us evolves around beer and food.

Well that’s what Lost Finger Lakes is all about, getting out there and traveling to all the amazing places around the region.

Ya, and it’s not just travel and leisure for us. It’s also part of our business. You know, we tend to get trapped in these four walls and it’s hard to get out because our job is so demanding. It’s 24/7, 365 days a year, but every now and again you have to get out. We use the restaurant and brewery as an excuse because it gets us out the door, but we like to see what’s going on out there, discovering what other breweries and restaurants are doing. It keeps us on our toes because it’s really easy to get isolated and assume we’re doing everything we’re supposed to do. But you have some ah-ha moments when you go out there and find inspiration. On top of that, everyone is just the bees knees, man. Everyone is go great and welcoming. We go to a brewery intending to just do a flight and get out of there, and two hours later we’ve toured the brewery, and met the owners and brewers. The camaraderie and friendship is pretty outstanding. It’s been awesome. 

How about food? Any favorite eateries?

Well, we brought up Geneva. We love getting to The Red Dove Tavern. I’ve known Rune for years through selling beer for the majority of my life. We love getting over there. We’ve had dinner at the FLX Table. That is a really unique experience. 

Here in Auburn, we love going over to Moro’s Table. Ed Moro is a pretty renowned chef in this area. He has another restaurant in Skaneateles. 

Ithaca is always a great spot to get down to. There is a lot happening with the local agriculture. We love the whole “farm-to-table” concept. One thing I love about Allagash Brewing Company in Maine is a beer they made called Farm To Face. The farmer they bought the fruit from was like, “I hate that term ‘farm-to-table’. You don’t leave it on the table, you put it right in your face!” I love the idea of “farm-to-face”, and there is just so much here. I really admire that chef in Geneva, Samantha Buyskes. She works at F2T Kitchen & Bar at the Ramada. I follow her on Instagram and love seeing what she is doing. 

Another good friend of ours, Luke Szabo, owns Scratch Farmhouse Catering. For Dawn and I, he really turned our palettes on edge. He’s not a formally trained chef but he goes out and forages his own mushrooms and fiddleheads. He is literally pulling everything out of the grown, putting it on a plate, and creating flavors that I had never tasted before. He is a mobile caterer but he does a lot. So do I have a favorite eatery? Ya, all of ‘em. Look at me! (laughs)

How about outdoor activities?

The biggest thing I’m into is grabbing the sticks and slapping the white ball around. That’s my number one thing. But when we’re out on the lake, we love bustin’ out the kayak to boogy up and down the lake. Especially early in the morning where you can just relax and not think about anything else. I used to do a lot of running and I’m trying to get back into that. One of my favorite events was Forge The Gorgeous, a 7-mile run through Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia. I’m trying to get back into that.

When I lived in Vermont, Tubbs Snowshoes was located in Stowe. So I got turned on to my first pair of snowshoes while living in Stowe. Just this past winter, I discovered some trails right by my house so I’ve brought that back. That one thing we miss about Lake Placid is you can walk out your door and go up a mountain. The challenge here is making the time and driving around. We are shifting some of our focus to get out and do that because there is so much to do here. I don’t care what I’m doing as long as I’m outside. I don’t care if it’s mowing my lawn for the third time in an hour, as long as I’m outside! 

What is the best kept secret of the Finger Lakes?

I don’t have to hesitate. For me, it’s the people. Having lived in Boston, Lake Placid, and Vermont, there’s a commonality when you leave these big metro areas. Things move a little slower. Does it have the cultural things like museums, zoos, ethnic foods? Not as much. But the people here are just outstanding. At the end of the day, for all this division and bullshit that’s going on right now, everyone has the same agenda here: work hard, take care of your family, and try to enjoy life. I moved here without knowing anybody. It helps owning a popular brewpub, you get to meet a lot of people, but people are just so friendly. That is what I’ve enjoyed more than anything else. It certainly adds to a greater quality of life, not being surrounded by a bunch of a-holes who are miserable because they’re stuck in traffic. We started this conversation by talking about Prison City and the fact that there’s a huge prison right here. There’s a lot of bad people in there yet I’ve never lived in a place where I felt so safe and comfortable. It’s total irony, isn’t it? It doesn’t make any sense, but here we are. Weird.

Photo: Prison City Brewing

Lost + Found is a series of short, standardized Q+A interviews with people involved in the Finger Lakes community. We sit down with the seekers, artisans, crafts people, and enthusiasts of the region, searching for food & drink, entertainment, culture, nature – everything that makes The Finger Lakes great. We invite you to get lost with us, and maybe find yourself along the way.