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<p>WILKES-BARRE TWP. &#8212; The idea to go into business together came to Mark Lehman and Chris Miller the same way that any good idea comes to mind&#8212;over a beer. They worked together at the now-closed Wilkes-Barre grocery store Sunshine Market in &#8217;91 and spent some of their free time enjoying each other&#8217;s company over what Miller called &#8220;lousy beers.&#8221; The revelation came in the form of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale&#8212;Miller and Lehman&#8217;s first not lousy beer.</p><p>&#8220;After that we&#8217;d always experiment,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;Buy different beers, things like that. At one point my sister Heather and brother-in-law Chris started homebrewing and that&#8217;s when we were really getting into it (so) we said we were going to start homebrewing. We kind of fast-tracked ourselves.&#8221;</p><p>Lehman and Miller started homebrewing in 2004 and found themselves immediately underequipped thanks to thirsty friends who drank liberally from their batches. After multiple upgrades, the duo decided that they&#8217;ve built something so large (they literally built the brewing system themselves) they should go commercial. They began distributing to bars in 2009, but once again, space became an issue.</p><p>&#8220;We started off in my garage (in Plains),&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;The whole setup was in the garage. At the max we distributed to about 30 bars. It got to the point where we needed to find a new home. We looked at a lot of different places and St. Joseph&#8217;s Monastery and School came up on the radar. We weren&#8217;t looking for a church or an old school specifically&#8212;this just came up. There were a couple things we were looking for. We wanted to have something with a lot of parking and something with a good view.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;We also wanted something with a lot of character,&#8221; Lehman added. &#8220;I believe this building definitely has a lot of character.&#8221;</p><p>The duo opened up a tap room for growler fills at the location two years ago and the brewpub opened last year. They keep the menu simple so they can be involved in the process as much as possible. They bake their own bread, they pickle their own pickles and they twist their own pretzels&#8212;they&#8217;re directly involved in the creation of everything on their menu except their lettuce, which comes from Rollins Greenhouse, and their meats, which come from No Bull Ranch in Waverly. The most important part of the menu&#8212;the beer&#8212;comes from ideas that ferment the same way as any other good idea the two have had.</p><p>&#8220;Coming up with a new beer happens to start while drinking beer,&#8221; Lehman said. &#8220;While you&#8217;re drinking a beer you start getting ideas of what would be cool. We&#8217;ll take, let&#8217;s say, a base IPA recipe then we&#8217;ll switch the hops up a little bit. We have a couple standards. &#8216;I Love PA,&#8217; which is one we&#8217;ve been brewing for a long time. We have a dark IPA, a Belgian IPA&#8212;we have a bunch of them. Recently we&#8217;ve been playing around with lots of different varieties of hops.&#8221;</p><p>Hops aren&#8217;t the only thing Lehman and Miller switch up. They brew a special firkin on Saturdays to test on the public. The frikins have featured everything from a watermelon beer with Cajun spices to a beer brewed with artichokes. They don&#8217;t name all the beers&#8212;they&#8217;re currently kicking around names for a new IPA tentatively titled &#8216;Test Pail Ale&#8217;&#8212;but all of their beers are named using references to the coal industry. It&#8217;s a theme that runs as deep as the moniker the duo chose for their venture.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s everything we wanted to do,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;What in this area is close to people&#8217;s hearts? Coal mining. Everybody&#8217;s father (or) grandfather in this area was a coal miner so we thought, &#8216;all right, let&#8217;s call ourselves Breaker Brewing Company&#8217; and just do a coal mining theme. People really connected to it.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;People will ask questions about the names,&#8221; Lehman added. &#8220;One of (the beers) is called Goldie&#8217;s and we get asked, &#8216;how is Goldie&#8217;s even related to coal mining?&#8217; Well, Goldie&#8217;s was a brothel in downtown Wilkes-Barre where the miners frequented. Everything is tied in one way or another.&#8221;</p><p>Lehman and Miller have been a team for a long time. They worked at Sunshine Market together, they did an undisclosed amount of beer research together, they worked for Frontier Communications for 14 years together and now they&#8217;re in business together. The fruits of their decades-long friendship come in growlers, firkins and pint glasses, and as far as what&#8217;s next for Breaker Brewing Company, they&#8217;ll look for the ideas in the same place they&#8217;ve always found them.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys01.jpg</photo0><caption0>Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys02.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys02.jpg</photo1><caption1>Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys03.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Beer taps at Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys03.jpg</photo2><caption2>Beer taps at Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre. </caption2><photoCredit2></photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys04.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller show a newly renovated room at their brew pub. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_breakerboys04.jpg</photo3><caption3>Owners of Breaker Boys Brewing Company in Wilkes-Barre Mark Lehman, left, and Chris Miller show a newly renovated room at their brew pub. </caption3><photoCredit3></photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Breaker Brewing Company explores area&#8217;s coal mining roots through beer</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Gene Axton</p><p>gaxton@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>IF YOU GO:</strong></p><p>What: Breaker Brewing Company</p><p>Where: 787 E. Northampton St. Wilkes-Barre Twp.</p><p>When: Hours of operation for the Brew Pub are 5 to 9 p.m Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 9 p.m. Fridays and noon to 8 p.m. Saturdays</p><p>More info: Call 570-392-9078 or visit <a href="http://www.breakerbrewingcompany.com">www.breakerbrewingcompany.com</a></p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Gene Axton at 570-704-3943 or on Twitter @TLArts</p></shirttailMeta></div>