Petrichor Brewing in O’Fallon, Missouri, rebrands to Shortleaf Brewing and plans to open new spot

It’s been a busy past few weeks for Shortleaf Brewing. Formerly known as Petrichor Brewing, the brewpub announced in mid-October that they would be rebranding, as well as expanding the scope of their production down to Camdenton near Lake of the Ozarks in a new space set to open in early 2022.

“We needed to [rebrand] because there’s a winery in California that trademarked Petrichor, but it coincided with opening [our Camdenton space] anyway,” said co-owner Michael Crowell. “So it just worked out. With the new spot, it made sense to come together with the partners and come to a consensus on a [new] name.”

While the Camdenton location offers plenty of space, essentially all of it will be used for brewing, as opposed to the O’Fallon location, which features a kitchen. “We needed to house more production space, since before we had to outsource [production]. … It will open as a production facility with a tasting room, but we will eventually have a kitchen there too,” said Crowell. “And this was also a chance to push into a different part of the state for the market.”

But why the name Shortleaf? “We wanted [to include] natural elements. We really like nature, so we were discussing things that were lake-related,” said Crowell. “[With] the shortleaf pine [tree], it’s tall and very impressive looking, but endangered. We wanted to fixate people’s eyes on something that could be gone if we don’t take care of it.”

As a result of Shortleaf’s goal to protect its namesake tree, there are plans to open a charity that will raise money for conservation efforts, with a percentage of profits from a forthcoming, pine-inspired IPA contributing to those charitable funds.“We’re using hops that are more pine-driven,” Crowell said about Shortleaf’s new IPA. “We have a recipe, but we haven’t brewed it yet. When we open up, we hope to have that on tap in the spring.”

The Shortleaf Brewing brewpub is located in O’Fallon at 7434 Village Center Drive, and is open on Mondays and Tuesdays from 4 to 10 p.m., Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and on Sundays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The new brewery location can be found at 311 S. Business Rte. 5 in Camdenton.