March 2022 marks the sixth anniversary of Tuned Up Brewing on Main Street. For owner Clint Tichnell, despite some setbacks along the way, running the brewery is still a labor of love. 

March 2016 was the official opening on Tuned Up, but the roots of the business date back a decade earlier. Tichnell began home brewing with fellow employees of the Trappe Fire Company back in 2004. The hobby grew to include multiple recipes, a home built bar in the garage and weekly neighborhood gatherings featuring live music by Clint and his future partner’s band, the Fermentors, beer tastings and smoked brisket.

Soon participants in the weekly gatherings began to suggest the brewers go professional and open a true business. The light-hearted conversations eventually turned serious and they began to look for possible locations to open a brewery. Then on a trip to George’s Music in search for a new acoustic guitar, Clint spotted a ‘for rent’ sign in the window of an empty storefront on Main Street.

With a low rental price, Clint and his partners decided Spring City was the right place to open their brewery.

“You know what Spring City, let’s give it a try!,” Clint recalled saying. “We saw some positive stuff start to happen in town, let’s  jump in on the ground floor and see what we can do with it.”

The Main Street storefront had a history in the beer business as the longtime home of Andy’s Bar. In the years since Andy’s closed, the location had multiple uses including storage, a tattoo parlor and a thrift store. Through the different configurations the original bar had been removed and the retail area was split into two.

After some remodeling, obtaining licenses and getting the facility up to code, Tuned Up officially opened with six beers on tap. In those early days, the tasting room was limited to the current barroom, as the current band area was still occupied by a thrift store. Food was offered on weekends by local food trucks.

“The initial response was more than I ever expected,” Clint explained. “Just how well the community around here has embraced us and we’ve embraced them. We really didn’t expect any of that. It’s been a pleasant surprise.”

Tuned Up Brewery quickly became a spot for local charities to hold fundraising events on nights the brewery was normally closed. They also began to hold a yearly guitar raffle to benefit one of the local charities.

In 2017, the brewery played a major role in the borough’s yearlong sesquicentennial celebration. In fact, the first event of the year, the SesquiSerenade featured a small group of musicians marching down Main Street that ended up at Tuned Up for a kickoff party.  Tuned Up also provided beer gardens for many of the events throughout the year and brewed two Spring City themed beers in honor of the sesquicentennial: the Spring City Common and Stove House Porter.

Through the third year of operation, the brewery had expanded into the area of the former thrift store, opened up a kitchen and Clint became the sole owner of Tuned Up Brewery. The business continued to grow through the years with an expanded menu and nightly live entertainment. 

Tuned Up carved out a unique position in the world of microbreweries. The small footprint of the brewery created a more intimate setting as opposed to the large, warehouse settings of many in the business. The bar is a place where strangers talk to each other about the beers they’re tasting or the music they’re listening to and there is a good chance the musician who played the previous night is sitting at the bar the next night.  

Like every small business in America, the brewery’s biggest challenge came in March of 2020 as the Covid pandemic hit Pennsylvania. 

“It almost shut us down,” Clint said “we’re still digging out from it.”

And if the shut downs, limited seating, and limited hours weren’t challenging enough, the brewery was inundated with flood waters when a quick moving thunderstorm crashed through Spring City in June of 2020.

“It knocked out my compressor, knocked out my boiler and knocked out my line chiller,” recalled Tichnell. Stuck without power, Clint decided rather than wasting food, he would give away meals to the many residents who were also without electricity. “I reached out to Dona (Mayor Kern) and said I got a generator keeping food hot. People are without power and need food, send them down!”

There were some silver linings that resulted from Covid Clint explained, “we switched over to take out food, we adapted…we kept the bills mostly paid. It gave me and Phil a chance to experiment in the kitchen. There was a good community response, we had our regulars that came down every week for take out.”

These days Tuned Up is gearing up for the post-pandemic world. Clint, along with Brandon Nocera and Phil Pole, continue to come up with new recipes in the kitchen. “Phil brings a unique set of skills, he’s more of a southern style with greens and mac and cheese.” Clint explains, “I’m more barbecue and French style. Phil, Brandon and I pretty much just come up with stuff and make it.”

Clint remains positive about the future of Spring City, “the way I look at Spring City, you got Phoenixville building up, Royersford building up, and council is willing to help build it up. The parking lot is going to be a big thing. I think there is a lot of potential here. This thing they’re building in Royersford, where SoulJoel’s was, while not in Spring City, it is going to bring foot traffic to Spring City. As long as we have stuff to walk down to, because it is a flat walk.”

For the future of the brewery, Clint hopes to one day open up the second floor as a lounge and perhaps move the brewing production to a new, larger location with greater production capacity and canning. And maybe even a second location in Philadelphia. 

In the meantime, Tuned Up will continue to offer fresh craft beer, an ever changing menu and one of the fullest entertainment schedules in the area including Tuesday night trivia, comedy open-mic on Wednesday followed by karaoke, open-mic on Thursday and live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

On March 1, 2022 local business owners will gather at Tuned Up to celebrate the breweries sixth anniversary. The evening will include a presentation by members of the Spring City Murals project. Also, Tuesday is Taco Night at the brewery!