Edward Kubit, of the Beverly Heights neighborhood, fondly remembers learning about the Whiskey Rebellion in elementary school. Now, more than 40 years later, he’s fighting to keep the western Pennsylvania tradition of rye whiskey alive.

Two years ago, Kubit found himself downsized from a corporate IT security job, which had allowed him to comfortably raise three children in the district. “It was a great career, but I never felt like I was accomplishing or building something,” said Kubit.

“It was always in the back of my mind that my dream in retirement was to start a small distillery,” he added. However, Kubit learned that this dream was far too expensive.

As he searched for another corporate job, Kubit’s wife, Jodi, encouraged him to go in a different direction and follow his passion. Kubit listened and took a distilling certification class at Point Park University in the summer of 2024.

The Distilling Science Academy is a 10-week course taught by the master distiller at Iron City Distilling, Matt Strickland.

With more than a decade of experience in the distilled spirits industry, as well as countless academic contributions to the whiskey education field, Strickland teaches at Point Park and several prominent distilling institutions.

The course covers the basics of the distillation process from a grain in the ground to the matured whiskey in the oak barrel.

“Eddie was one of the first students I had at Point Park and immediately I knew he was somebody that was insatiably curious, and a super nice guy to boot,” said Strickland. “That’s a wonderful attitude to have in a student, but also an employee.”

Strickland and the Iron City team hired Kubit just a few weeks after the class.

For Kubit, rye whiskey isn’t just a passion, but a defining feature of western Pennsylvania life. “This area that my kids and I grew up in is so steeped in tradition of the production of distilled spirits,” he said.

As an elementary schooler at Our Lady of Grace, a parochial school in Scott, Kubit found a historical placard marking John Neville’s Bower Hill Plantation. Neville, a tax collector, saw the property torched during the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising by farmers in 1794 against a
federal tax on whiskey.

”In the 1800s, rye whiskey made in western Pennsylvania, the frontier at the time, was the premium spirit of the land,” he said.

According to Kubit, this changed when Prohibition came and went, making farmers realize that they could use corn, a less expensive crop to distill bourbon, which took over as the new spirit of the land.

“Rye whiskey fell off in popularity until recently when bartenders started looking at old cocktail recipes, and a lot of them called for rye,” explained Kubit. “Iron City is dedicated to rebirthing rye whiskey production in western Pennsylvania.”

“By taking the job as a distiller and actually making whiskey, I get to drill into a barrel and drink the whiskey inside and think ‘Wow, I was a part of that,’” said Kubit. “And for me, that’s so fulfilling.”