Erik Pizer has been hard at work revamping the space that used to house 350 Brewing Co., where he got his start professionally as a brewer, on the road to opening Flipside Brewing in Tinley Park. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

Over the past few months, Erik Pizer has torn apart and retooled the space in Tinley Park that housed 350 Brewing until earlier this year when it closed permanently. While that may sound like nothing unusual for a business owner getting ready to open a new brewery and restaurant, Pizer has a unique perspective. He got his professional start in that very building as 350′s original brewer.

“The first few times walking in here was just surreal,” said Pizer, of Palos Heights. “The cliché of blood, sweat and tears — I was around when we built this. A handful of us poured that bar ourselves with the cement. … It feels like home. I’ve been gone for far longer than I was ever here. It’s all new but it feels like I never left.”

Pizer moved on from 350 more than five years ago, became head brewer at Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery in Warrenville and then helped open Milk Money Brewing in La Grange. When his role as head brewer there came to an end in February, he was trying to figure out what might fit his ambition next.

“I wasn’t looking for a shift brewery gig,” Pizer said. “I felt like my skills and experience were a little bit more than just that. So I made a call.”

That was to his former landlord at 350. Pizer learned that not only was the space at 7144 183rd St. in Tinley Park available, but also that it came with the contents, including furniture, a full kitchen and the brewing equipment.

“It was fitting in every way possible,” Pizer said. “I signed the lease on April 1. Had I announced anything publicly that day, no one would have believed me. It’s just too good to be true.”

But Pizer wasted little time getting to work. He will not be maintaining the punk rock dive bar vibe of 350 — or throwing convention center-caliber events. Flipside will be “as different in appearance as possible,” Pizer said. The atmosphere will be a little more mature, and Pizer has spent much of his time peeling the stickers off everything.

“It’s OK to look nice and act like we’ve been here before, because I literally have,” he said. “I don’t think anyone coming in here expecting 350 is going to get 350. It’s a different vibe.”

The beer is going to be “clean and normal and straight to the point,” he added, as he does not like to play around much with “wacky ingredients.” Pizer will focus more on classic beers — British styles, German lagers and brews of that sort. With no immediate plans for distribution, Pizer wants beer on tap that supports his aim to make Flipside a neighborhood spot.

“I’ll play around with some of the more trendy beers, but a place like this, especially, having a little bit of something for everyone and doing it all clean and crisp and well should be a good enough recipe to at least sustain for a while,” he said.

A recipe that Pizer has brought nearly everywhere he’s been is likely to be one of the first brews on the menu. It started as the Crook County IPA under the banner of 350. At Milk Money, it resurfaced under another name.

“The beer was never broke,” Pizer said. “That was never the problem with why I left anywhere, so I figured I’d just keep doing it. ... Why stop with something good?”

When it comes to food, Flipside is going to avoid tacos, Pizer said, because there is already another spot down 183rd Street that does them well. There is a good, collaborative spirit among the area breweries, and he wants to embrace that. The menu focus at Flipside will be bar staples.

“We’re going to focus on having a really killer cheeseburger and good wings, a couple salads, chicken sandwich, that sort of thing,” Pizer said. “Food you want to eat when you’re drinking beers.”

Pizer still thinks the spot near the intersection of 183rd Street and Harlem Avenue is a great location — maybe more so now than when 350 first opened because of the growing beer scene. Traffic in the area is great, and Pizer hopes by offering beer, cocktails, wine, cider and food at Flipside he is checking enough boxes to get as many people through the doors as possible.

This time around will also be different, Pizer said, because he is doing things on his own terms. He and his wife, Katie, are on their own in this venture.

“I’m just going to be trying to do things the way I think they should be done now, without compromising that to anyone else’s thoughts, because I don’t have to anymore,” he said.

Pizer plans to open July 29. The logo is already on the glasses and the wall, so things are getting closer to coming “full circle,” he said, joking that name already was taken.

“It’s the flip side of the whole thing — all the parts of my story up until now,” Pizer said. “I started here. I’m ending here. I’m not doing this again.”

Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.