Wissahickon Brewing, one of Northwest Philly’s best breweries, arrives in Kensington

For all the restaurant buzz in Kensington, some swaths of the neighborhood are surprisingly light on daily breakfast and lunch options. That’s particularly true of what some folks call Olde Kensington, a section of North Philadelphia that’s bounded by Girard and Cecil B. Moore Avenues between Sixth and Front Streets.

The newly opened Wissahickon Brewing, at 1526 N. American St., aims to change that: The East Falls brewery’s second location features a full kitchen that will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends. Coffee and tea drinks — courtesy of Wissahickon’s cafe concept, Wirlybird Coffee — are the beverages of choice in the mornings; beer, cider, and kombucha start flowing at 11 a.m.

“When you’re paying rent — as we are — 24 hours a day, we need to bring customers in earlier. I don’t want anyone to come in for a beer at seven [a.m.], but coffee is a no-brainer," said brewery cofounder Tim Gill, who owns Wissahickon Brewing Co. with his three sons: Tim Jr., Luke, and Pete.

The Gill family spent 18 months renovating this 7,500-square-foot space, formerly home to Original 13 Ciderworks. They demolished walls to expand the taproom’s footprint and added two mezzanines to make enough room for 200 seats. They also redid the floors, installed new floor-to-ceiling garage doors, added two bathrooms, and rebuilt a 7-barrel production space which will be dedicated to making Inspired Brews, a kombucha brand Wissahickon purchased in 2023. The Gills anticipated spending $1.5 million on the new space but came in under budget, Tim Jr. said.

“We bootstrapped a lot of this,” said Tim Jr. “Between my dad and myself, my brothers Pete and Luke, if we can do it ourselves, we’re going to.” (“Everything done according to code as required,” chimed in Tim Sr., who spent decades working in city government before retiring in 2016 to launch the brewery.)

Undertaking kitchen service marks a new frontier for Wissahickon, which first opened in East Falls in 2017 and has hosted countless food trucks in the years since — several of which have graduated to brick-and-mortar restaurants, including Tabachoy, one of The Inquirer’s 76 essential restaurants, and Char Pizza. When Gill and sons first looked at the Olde Kensington site, they were unsure how to approach the existing large kitchen space. They had already dipped their toes into expanding hours and service at Wissahickon’s East Falls location — they introduced Wirlybird in early 2023 — but still relied on outside vendors, bringing in Au Fornil pastries to go with their coffee drinks.

After signing the lease on the American Street facility, though, the Gills decided it was worth bringing food in-house. “We always thought that if folks wanted to get up at 4 a.m. and chop onions, let them be the ones that prepare the food, because we’ll focus on the beer,” said Tim Sr. “That said, I think the model can maybe give us more control … You gotta be able to make a nickel on a hamburger. If you can’t do that, then you’re doing something wrong.”

Wissahickon‘s five-person kitchen staff is helmed by chef Noah Gindin, a Schulson Collective alum and Germantown native, who plans to offer a menu comparable to what you might find at Talula’s Daily. The morning offerings aren’t entirely set, but Gindin plans to start off with grab-and-go options like yogurt and fruit bowls and breakfast sandwiches; sit-down offerings like a diner-style breakfast and avocado toast should be coming soon. The early lunch/dinner menu includes $10 sandwiches (fried chicken, sausage and peppers, roast pork, broccoli rabe), $9 burgers (a traditional 8-ounce patty, plus smash, salmon, and veggie variants), $7 salads (Caesar, tomato, farro), and $6 appetizers.

The new taproom has 24 draft lines to showcase the brewery’s wide-ranging styles, including its best-selling West Coast IPA Hail Mary, the award-winning Devil’s Pool double IPA, and Sunnyside Mexican lager, which Tim Sr. describes as “our answer to Corona — we add the lime for you because we know you’re lazy.”

“We started out as almost IPA-centric, because it’s what the world loved and that’s what we love,” Tim Sr. said. “But you got to be able to make a beer that’s not your favorite, so we make everything.” The Gills expanded to kombucha in 2023 because “it’s delicious, it’s good for you, and it makes a great alternative mixer instead of [soda],” Tim Sr. said.

Wissahickon brews around 2,000 barrels of beer annually to supply their two taprooms plus 125 bars and restaurants in the area; the new kombucha system should be able to churn out 240 barrels a year. Between the two locations, the company employs about 40 staffers, both full-time and part-time.

The Gill men first started making beer together at their family home in Roxborough after Tim Jr. bought Tim Sr. a home-brew kit for Father’s Day in 2010. It became an essential weekly activity, Tim Sr. said. “What [my wife and I] experienced was that they will adore you up to a certain point, and then they can’t stand you,” he said. “You gotta find something for them to adore you again, and making beer was my trick.”

The father and sons moved from the kitchen to the deck to the basement as their enthusiasm and equipment grew.

“Then we started entering our beers into contests — ‘Your mom says it’s good, but how about the rest of the world?’ — and we started winning medals,” Tim Sr. said. Around 2014 or so, the Gill men got more serious about the idea of brewing professionally. Tim Sr. left his job first, and gradually the sons left their respective jobs at Comcast, KPMG, and Merck. (Tim Sr.’s sole daughter currently works as a nurse, following in her mom’s footsteps. “Maybe someday she’ll come in as well,” he said.)

Fifteen years on, the homebrewing hobby has become the foundation for a legacy Tim Sr. hopes the next generation of Gills can share. He and his wife have seven grandkids between two of their four kids; another son is getting married this summer. “We’re growing,” Tim Sr. said. “We want to have something that lives on.”