A guy came into Tony Molinero's sprawling beer distributorship in Bridgeville and asked if he remembered what Duquesne beer tasted like.

"I said, 'Dude, that was 35 years ago,' " Mr. Molinero recalled. "I can't remember what the beer I had yesterday tasted like."

But this 63-year-old former bank executive knows what it feels like to report to work in shorts after 3 1/2 decades of weekdays in a suit. And if this seems an unlikely career change, well, we should all be so lucky.

Mr. Molinero, of Peters, spent 37 years in banking. He never left a firm in those years, but the firms sometimes left him. He started with Union National, which became Integra, which became National City. His title went from senior vice president to executive vice president and back again, but always he was in wealth management.

By 2007, he didn't like the changes he was seeing, and he took a buyout at age 60. He spent his time hunting, fishing, shooting sporting clays and traveling with his wife, Judy.

He'd still be doing that had his godson and nephew not called.

"Hey, Unc, are you tired of retirement? You want to get into the beer business?"

His nephew, Charles Caputo, is an attorney who represents beer distributors and bar owners, you see. But Mr. Molinero didn't see this as a good fit.

"Charlie," he told his godson, "I drink vodka. What do I know about beer?"

But this young business, Beer & Pop 4 Less in Great Southern Shopping Center off Washington Pike, was just 10 miles from his Peters home. He checked it out and six months after his nephew called, the man who thought he'd retired for life closed on the beverage center. That was February 2009.

The beer couldn't be any more different than banking.

"I love being on the floor," he said. "I have not come across one bad customer, not one. I don't know if that's because anybody who buys beer is always happy."

There are more than 800 brands of beer in his store, but the people who run the place come in just one variety: the Molinero clan. Mr. Molinero's son, Adam, 29, moved back home from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., just before his father bought the place, and he deals with the sales representatives.

"There's nothing better than working with my dad," Adam said.

Mr. Molinero's sister, Janet Caputo, works the register. It was only supposed to be a day, then two, but now it's five days a week, she said. But that's part of what makes this business different.

"People like it because they know it's all family,'' she said.

Mr. Molinero could probably knock off by noon each day, and he does come and go as he pleases, but he's generally there to open the store and usually stays until the early evening.

"I'm here seven days a week,'' he said. "Because I want to be, not because I have to be.''

He's coming around to beer, too. He hadn't drunk much of it since he was a young man in Beechview sneaking them in the woods with his buddies, but now he's touring Pennsylvania via his shelves, one microbrewery product at a time: Penn Pilsner (North Side), the Church Brew Works' Celestial Gold (Lawrenceville), Victory HopDevil (Downingtown) and Troegs (Harrisburg).

"Troegs' Mad Elf -- we can't get enough of it," he said of their October-December ale. "We ask for 100 cases and maybe get 40 or 50."

The revived Duquesne Beer is enjoying a similar popularity. The first 500 barrels -- that's 8,200 cases -- of the inaugural batch sold out quickly this summer, from Erie to Allentown. Owner Mark Dudash said Monday another 18,000 to 20,000 cases of Duke beer, brewed in Latrobe, should come on line Sept. 21.

Mr. Dudash, 51, an Upper St. Clair attorney, just ordered a million beer labels, so he expects his product to be around a while.

All his lawyer friends who hate lawyering are telling him how lucky he is to have found another venture. So when he heard of Mr. Molinero's late career switch, he said, "He's probably very happy."

Yeah. Wearing shorts in summer and jeans in winter, it's like the slogan in those old beer commercials: It doesn't get any better than this.