Balance Brewing Opens in Ross, Bringing Neighborhood Craft Beer to Pittsburgh

The 14,400-square-foot building at 2257 Babcock Blvd. in Ross Township has housed a USA Baby showroom, a Spirit Halloween pop-up, and a craft brewery that ultimately couldn't keep its lights on. Now it has a second shot at suds.

Balance Brewing soft-opened March 19 in the former Necromancer Brewing space, which sat largely dormant after Necromancer shuttered in early 2024. Co-founders Rob Houston and Matt Gibb, alongside Atlanta-based financial partner Drew Smith, converted the footprint into a 3,400-square-foot taproom, more than double the square footage Necromancer once used, anchored by a seven-barrel electric brewhouse.

"A good beer is balanced in its sweetness and bitterness," said Houston, who logged time at Brew Gentlemen in Braddock and Pittsburgh Brewing Company before turning to ownership. He and Gibb first crossed paths at Hitchhiker Brewing in Sharpsburg, where Gibb served as head brewer. By around 2020 they were already sketching out what a place of their own might look like. Gibb, who trained at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, built the opening tap list with range in mind: House Lager and Cat Party Cream Ale anchor the approachable end, River Views IPA handles the hop crowd, and Gorilla Gardening hazy IPA stakes out the experimental territory.

The staffing philosophy runs parallel to the beer philosophy. "People in this industry can be very passion driven," Houston said. "We want to make sure our employees have a good work-life balance and they're not at work all the time by necessity or drive."

The taproom itself gives the neighborhood something to come back for: rotating pinball machines, a planned mural, and an outdoor patio for warmer weather, with trivia nights and live music on the calendar. Food trucks will rotate through regularly, patrons can bring outside food, and a storage area in the building is already being eyed as a future event room.

On the production side, Balance plans to begin canning within weeks and will start supplying kegs to nearby bars once packaging volume ramps up. Inheriting an existing brewery footprint was a deliberate call: it reduced the startup capital required to get the system running.

For homebrewers with ownership ambitions, the Balance origin story is worth studying. Houston and Gibb each built deep industry experience before going independent, Houston on the operations and packaging side across multiple production scales, Gibb developing his craft at a well-regarded Pittsburgh taproom. They brought in a financially focused third partner, took over infrastructure that already existed rather than building from scratch, and launched with a deliberately focused tap list rather than chasing novelty on opening weekend.

Balance Brewing is open 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 2 to 10 p.m. Friday, noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday at 2257 Babcock Blvd. in Ross Township.