A family’s dream of a smokehouse brewery turned into something grander. Five years ago, Jennifer and Doug Irwin visited their son Tyler in Salt Lake City. During the visit, Tyler shared that he had gotten the craft beer bug, was going to leave his job and go to work for a local brewery. Having retired early, bought a farm, and hoping to open a smokehouse, Doug suggested that their son move back to the Finger Lakes and work with them to open a brewery.
“Driving home from work the next day he heard Cody Johnson’s song ‘Till You Can’t’ on the radio and knew he had to take a chance,” Doug said.
Over the next two years the Irwins built and planted a hops yard in one of their former small hay pastures. Tyler enrolled in a brewer’s certification course at Cornell. The family also purchased equipment to begin home brewing various styles of beer.
Meanwhile, Doug had a professional off-set smoker built in Alabama and sharpened his skills, creating his own versions of standard smokehouse side dishes and developing recipes for salad dressings, barbecue sauces, sandwiches and various brisket and pulled pork dishes.
Doug and Jennifer put together a business plan and began looking for the right location. After months of no luck, he was driving through Naples one day when he noticed Neapolitan Pizzeria was for sale. “Housed in a beautiful former mansion built in 1878, we were very familiar with the restaurant,” Doug stated. “While building a business around an authentic wood fired pizza restaurant was not part of the plan, purchasing a successful business and making it our own made perfect sense.”
The Irwins spent six months renovating the building as well as making changes to the dough, the sauce, several of the toppings and how they were prepared. They purchased local oak to fuel the oven. Eventually they added a full barbecue menu with their house smoked specialties, changed the sandwich lineup, added all new dressings and sauces made from scratch and expanded the beer and wine offerings. They even developed a number of new specially curated pizzas that have become customer favorites.
“Over the past couple of years, I believe that we have created a welcoming family environment for our regulars as well as the many tourists who visit us,” said Doug.
The Irwins invest a great deal of time and energy into creating and serving fresh, thought out, consistent and flavorful food. For them, cooking a pizza in a wood-fired oven where the temperature varies based on the location of the pie is a true art form. The trick is to get a slightly charred outside crust that somehow remains light and airy on the inside. “No one does it like Tyler and his team,” Doug observed. “We have regulars who drive down from Canada because they want one of our pizzas. Our customers crave our sauces and dressings. They know our barbecue is authentic. No short cuts, just good old fashioned low and slow hardwood smoked brisket, pork, chicken, ribs and wings.”
While Tyler focuses on the front of the house and making pizza, Doug focuses on the barbecue, supporting side items, paninis and salads. Together, they form a collaborative team. “We are self-taught and our own worst critics,” Doug shared. “We constantly look to each other for thoughts on new recipes or changes to our current offerings.”
While the main dishes are the centerpiece of any meal, Doug takes great joy in crafting sides, appetizers and dressings. His attention to the smaller dishes brings out unique flavors. Patrons can enjoy the notes of brown sugar, molasses, barbecue sauce, onion, bacon, brisket and Founders Porter in every batch of the smokehouse’s Cowboy Brisket Beans. They can detect crunchy, sweet Honeycrisp apples in the coleslaw. Many love the Smokehouse Mac-n-Cheese with a special dry rub-infused cream cheese, smoked gouda and cheddar cheese sauce. “Creating these unique flavors is the best part of my job,” Doug stated.
Naples Woodfired Pizza & Smokehouse rounds out its dinners with a sweet treat, thanks to a partnership with Dippity Do Dahs Homemade Ice Cream in Corning. Last summer, the Irwins converted an old horse trailer into the “Go Big Green” Naples Ice Cream Bar, in support of Naples High School. The trailer opened for the summer season on May 22.
But there’s more in store for the Irwins than pizza, barbecue and ice cream. They recently purchased the Naples Brewing Company, a small brewery in the heart of the village. Tyler was appointed as brewmaster and brewed his first batch with the help of the original founding brewers.
“Our brewery has come full circle,” Doug said. “My wife would think something was missing if I didn’t say, ‘Wood fired pizza, smoked barbecue, homemade ice cream and New York local craft beer. Why go anyplace else!'”
