PHILOSOPHY
Generous and informative. Their newsletter is among the best in the entire industry.
KEY BEER
Every few months they do a “forty-three hours festival,” committed for one whole week to one style of beer. This is just one of the reasons why Ratebeer.com has dubbed it one of the top fifty beer bars in the world for several years running.
DEVIL’S BACKBONE
200 Mosbys Run • Roseland, VA 22967 (434) 361-1001 • dbbrewingcompany.com • Established: 2008
SCENE & STORY
Devils Backbone is a two-and-a-half-story mountain lodge–style brewpub in a tiny town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Nelson County. It burst onto the national craft brewing radar at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival and 2010 World Beer Cup in Chicago by racking up no less than twelve medals, including Champion Brewery and Brewmaster at the WBC (in the Small Brewpub category, 2010). Despite having only opened a few years before, the brewery was suddenly Virginia’s most award-winning, and the little 8bbl brewpub near the Wintergreen ski area in a town of less than 2,000 was sharing the stage with some truly heavy hitters in the industry. Those 2,000 locals were ecstatic, naturally, and plans to expand with a second location with a 30bbl brewhouse and packaging line near Charlottesville came together rapidly. The original location is a handsome structure made of materials repurposed from a 1900s dairy barn, a horse farm, and a tobacco plantation barn. As of 2015, they’re making 67,000 barrels a year, but aim for over 200,000. And in recent years, the medals have started to pile up.
PHILOSOPHY
Brewer Jason Oliver tends to brew and naturally carbonate subtle twists on sessionable old-world styles that might seem tame compared to the fare on draft in some craft beer destinations, but are well made nonetheless—Trojan Horses of craft beer in this neck of Bud country rural American South.
KEY BEER
There are ten beers on tap at all times including four year-round beers and six rotating seasonal beers created by Oliver. Golf Leaf Lager, a 4.5% ABV international-style pilsner, the brewery’s flagship, is a good place to start. Lately Oliver has been working on bigger styles, from Wheat Stouts to Black IPAs and Imperial Coffee Stouts.
BLUE MOUNTAIN BREWERY
9519 Critzers Shop Rd. • Afton, VA 22920 (540) 456-8020 • bluemountainbrewery.com • Established: 2007
SCENE & STORY
As the name suggests, this is another brewery with a proud connection to the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, and resides in a beautiful white building outside of Charlottesville along the Monticello Wine Trail. But the connection to the land here goes even deeper: Starting in 2006, owner and head brewer Taylor Smack began growing his own hops, and is now wrangling 1000 hills of Cascade and Centennial, which are irrigated with brewery runoff and used in the brewing process.
PHILOSOPHY
Innovative brewing with a southern touch—and a green heart. He’s keeping an eye on Virginia Tech experiments aiming to develop strains of barley that could flourish locally, and the brewpub is serving beef from cattle raised on his spent grains.
KEY BEER
Start with the light, crisp classic Blue Mountain lager (5.3% ABV) and work your way up to taste more hops from the site. Dark Hollow is an imperial coffee and chocolate stout of 10% ABV you could easily finish your day with.
931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy. • Charlottesville, VA 22902 • (434) 984-9822 • monticello.org
It’s a relatively minor point of interest among historians but one enormous point of pride for craft beer aficionados that Thomas Jefferson was highly involved in brewing. Beer was considered one of the “table liquors” traditionally served with meals, and there was a dedicated cellar at Monticello for aging the house ales before they’d be served upstairs. Beer was in the picture early on. According to records from 1772, Jefferson’s wife, Martha, was used to brewing fifteen-gallon casks of small beer every two weeks. (Small beers can be made with the spent grain of stronger batches or simply with less grain; either way the technique results in a lower alcohol brew.) By 1794, Jefferson had planted hops, and Monticello, which had been conceived with a brewery in the elevation drawings, was on its way to becoming a full-fledged estate brewery—even a malt house would be added much later, in 1820. In 1815, Jefferson wrote in a letter to Joseph Coppinger (himself a brewer):
“I am lately become a brewer for family use, having had the benefit of instruction to one of my people by an English brewer of the first order.”
One man’s misfortune is another’s gain: Joseph Miller, a British expatriate and trained brewer who had been caught up in the War of 1812, shipwrecked with his daughter in the Delaware River and stranded in Albemarle County, found his way to Monticello to brew with Jefferson. Miller, for his part, is said to have introduced Jefferson to some stronger ales (compared to Martha’s style of small beers) which would keep longer in the cellar. Miller also trained one of Jefferson’s slaves, Peter Hemings (brother of Sally), how to malt and brew with raw materials grown on the 5,000-acre hilltop estate, which included wheat, corn, and hops (no barley was grown). Hemings was a quick study, and would eventually undertake the brewing of 100 gallons of ale every spring and fall.
By 1814, a sturdy brewhouse was in place, and Hemings and Jefferson began malting estate grains to avoid having to buy them, enough to turn out sixty-gallon batches of brew at a time. Jefferson preferred to bottle condition the ales, decrying local brews from the “public breweries” as “meager and vapid” and was fixated on cork quality. As he served the finished ale to friends, family, and visiting dignitaries, his fame as a brewer spread, and neighbors were soon asking him how they could get into the act, too.
To celebrate Jeffersonian zymurgy (the art and science of brewing), nearby Starr Hill Brewery founder and brewmaster Mark Thompson and brewer Levi Hill collaborated with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in late 2010 and early 2011 on the launch of Monticello Reserve Ale, the official beer of Monticello, inspired by what was produced and consumed by the third president and his guests. Today, Monticello Reserve Ale is sold in 750-milliliter bottles at the brewery and served on tap at local restaurants. It’s extremely light in body and bitterness by today’s standards, but offers a taste of what Jefferson brewed himself.
BEST of the REST: VIRGINIA
RUSTICO
827 Slaters Ln. • Alexandria, VA 22314 • (703) 224-5051 • rusticorestaurant.com
A wood-oven pizzeria with a mean beer selection (thanks to Greg Engbert, who worked at the famous Brickskeller Bar and went on to put Birch & Barley and Church Key on the map), Rustico is a spacious modern eatery with thirty taps and around 250 bottled selections from such incredibly esoteric producers as De Hoevebrouwers and Brouwerij Girardin (Belgium) and Birrificio Troll (Italy). One nice touch: Beers are served in the proper glassware, such as snifters for stronger ales, which help aromas waft out of the glass, and the service and food come highly recommended. Now there are two locations, with one in Arlington called Rustico Ballston.
CAPITAL ALEHOUSE
623 E. Main St. • Richmond, VA 23219 • (804) 780-2537 • capitalalehouse.com
The original of five locations in the area, this well-established beer bar was opened in 2002 in the heart of downtown Richmond within walking distance of Brown’s Island, the Richmond Ballet, and the Virginia State Capitol. Constructed with sweat equity by a group of beer fanatics in a 108-year-old building, the bar boasts more than fifty taps, two cask beer engines, more than 200 bottled beers from around the world, and a varied pub grub menu. On a lower level there’s a pool table, four dart boards, and a beer garden area with communal seating and a fountain for al fresco beer drinking.
HARDYWOOD PARK
2408-2410 Ownby Ln. • Richmond, VA 23220 • (804) 420-2420 • hardywood.com
Lifelong friends Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh, the story goes, discovered craft beer while touring a sheep station called Hardywood Park in Australia back in 2001. Murtaugh, from a long line of famil
y brewers, graduated from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago in 2010, then relocated to Munich, Germany and studied at the vaunted Doemens Academy. Located in the heart of a historic German brewing district in Richmond, Hardywood Park is a two-building affair with a music venue in one and a modern twenty-barrel Newlands brewhouse in the other, but recipes are troubleshot on a twenty-gallon pilot system. They’re famous for great service and a wide range of barrel-aged beers, especially a spicy Gingerbread Stout made with local baby ginger, wildflower honey, whole Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans, and Vietnamese cinnamon.
STRANGEWAYS BREWING
2277 Dabney Rd. • Richmond, VA 23230 • (804) 303-4336 • strangewaysbrewing.com
Opened in 2013, Strangeways Brewing is a production brewery with multiple tasting-room spaces pouring over twenty-five unique beers on tap. You’ve got to go here and see the bar, a shrine of breweriana. Also, there’s a terrific biergarten where you can nosh from food trucks on site and toss a little cornhole. Take beer to-go by the bottle, growler, or Ball mason jar, and time your visit for some live music, trivia, or even burlesque.
DELAWARE
DOGFISH HEAD BREWINGS & EATS
320 Rehoboth Ave. • Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971 • (302) 226-2739 • dogfish.com • Established: 1995
SCENE & STORY
Named for a spit of land on the craggy Maine coast, Dogfish Head is the brainchild of Sam Calagione, who grew up in a winemaking family in Massachusetts and was once kicked out of prep school for unruly behavior (which, according to Burkhard Bilger’s widely-noticed 2008 New Yorker profile, included the following: “flipping a truck on campus; breaking into the skating rink and playing naked hockey; “surfing” on the roof of a Winnebago, going sixty miles per hour down I-91.” Not to mention selling shoulder-tapped cases of beer he hid in his hockey bag to students for a profit.).
Today, the company he leads (along with his effusive wife, Mariah) has become, along with Sierra Nevada and the Boston Beer Company, one of the best-known craft breweries in the country, widely imitated and envied by competitors. Once touted as the smallest in the nation, it now hovers around #13 out of 4,000 in sales volume—and counting.
The success of Dogfish didn’t always seem to be in the cards. After stints in graduate school in New York and a bit of modeling—and having only brewed perhaps ten batches of beer—Calagione headed to Delaware to open that state’s first brewery since Prohibition using a tiny pilot system and a bunch of commercially untested and unconventional—even haphazard—recipes. The state laws still forbade brewpubs at the time (a situation he successfully helped lobby to change) and the early years were financially sketchy. But the pub and nanobrewery took off, and Calagione’s timing proved impeccable.
Out of the ashes of a nationwide slowdown in the craft beer sector around 1996, Dogfish emerged as a creative juggernaut as the industry regained its composure and the sector returned to double-digit growth, which makes it sound more business-like than it really was. To list the various attention-grabbing (and occasionally award-winning) semistunts released since then—sometimes dubbed “extreme brewing,” using such ingredients as African honey, muscat grapes, chrysanthemums, even algae—would be a long and thirst-provoking task involving footnotes. But amid the wacky, sometimes deliberately provocative libations (“Golden Shower” was one ill-advised label) have emerged a few slightly more sober-minded experiments reinterpreting ancient recipes, a track that Calagione and company have spent a great deal of time chasing around the world. Along the way Sam has written a few books, raised a family, and high-fived his way into an ever-brighter spotlight with each new release, making it all look easy. Of course, it’s not. Madness, meet method.
Beyond the experiments, Sam’s Dogfish crew crafted recipes appealing to wider audiences, too, and it was perhaps inevitable that Calagione and his Dogfish would be ready for a close-up. In 2010, the Discovery Channel created a new show, Brew Masters, centered around his globe-trotting recipe hunts and daily business challenges played as life-or-death countdowns to disaster or critical acclaim. While it didn’t last, the impact was wide. Every beer geek in America tuned in.
Dogfish offers free tours of the nearby main brewery (reserve ahead by calling); make sure to look out for the bocce courts and treehouse boardroom. A combination brewery tour in Milton and trip to the original two-story pub location in the center of Rehoboth makes for an excellent long afternoon and evening. There are always more than twenty Dogfish brews and a cask (including pub-only drafts). There’s also a microdistillery on-site, solid pub grub, and live music on occasion. If Sam’s there (and he often is), he’ll be rapping with the dishwasher. Despite all his fame and acclaim, he knows everyone who works with him at the company.
Best of all, Dogfish recently built the 16-room Dogfish Inn in Lewes, Delaware, overlooking the harbor in a prime location between Dogfish’s brewpub and distillery and the production brewery in nearby Milton. It’s a stylish update on the classic American motel, with throwback custom Woolrich blankets, vintage-style tote bags for the beach and breweries, and mini-fridges stocked with locally made snacks. Sweet dreams, beer lovers.
PHILOSOPHY
Dogfish Head is a seamless meld of restless beer-geek thinking plus market savvy and a hearty dose of punk rock attitude, a winning and incredibly unique combo. Its official MO has long been “Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People,” but “controlled chaos” might be a more succinct description. The beers are designed to make you think, but not at the expense of actually drinking them again and again and again.
KEY BEER
The best experimental beer? Take your pick, but the recent Miles Davis–inspired Bitches Brew, made with brown sugar from the island of Mauritius, raw unfiltered Ethiopian honey, and “an a--load of dark, roasty grains to balance the sweetness of the honey,” as Calagione explained it to me, is a great example. The company’s top seller is 60 Minute IPA, first brewed in 2003 and a graham cracker–like feast Calagione has described as being “super pungent, citrusy, and grassy, without being crushingly bitter.”
BEST of the REST: DELAWARE
IRON HILL
147 E. Main St. • Newark, DE 19711 • (302) 266-9000 • ironhillbrewery.com
Now the flagship of a mini chain with twelve locations in the area and brewing medals with surprising speed (nine major categories in two prestigious competitions during 2010), the original Iron Hill location is located near the University of Delaware. There are five house standard beers ranging from a light lager to a 5.4% ABV porter, plus an always-on seasonal Belgian ale, several other seasonals, and about seventeen bottled reserves (including some vintage-dated beers). The house beers are fine, but the action for committed craft mavens is in those ever-changing offerings from month to month. The interior is sort of “modern library,” with reddish wood paneling and deep green walls beneath a vaulted modern Quonset hut ceiling. The menu reaches for a higher culinary plane than most brewpubs, too, with respectable results.
The SOUTH & SOUTHEAST
SWEET TEA, JAMBALAYA, BARBECUE . . . AND BELGIAN ALE? WITH PROHIBITION-ERA LAWS still on the books in parts of the region, keeping the beer weak and home-brew kettles dry (Alabama and Mississippi only legalized the practice of homebrewing as of 2013), it seemed good beer might never really arrive in the Deep South, much less reweave the social fabric as it has in cities like Philly, Portland, and San Diego. There was—and surely still is, in some dustier corners—a sense that craft beer might not really make sense. There’s something about the easygoing South that calls for the finished fermented product of malt, hops, yeast, and water in a red plastic cup, very cold and very light, or, lacking such a distinguished vessel, simply canned and cold on a hot day. The late, great Mississippi writer Larry Brown’s imagery (and preferred method) of drinking beer—while blasting Robert Earl Keen with empties clanging around in the back of an old beater and hauling down some country road—seems more apt.
And yet the art of craft beer has well a
nd truly arrived in the South. Brewing is nothing if not social, and there’s no better match to a spicy pulled pork po’boy than a crisp craft-brewed pilsner. From ambitious new breweries in Asheville and new beer bars in New Orleans, the former “brewing capital of the South,” to the anodyne, palm-lined byways of South Florida, it’s becoming one of the country’s most interesting regions when it comes to craft beer.
Even as government bureaucrats bicker about alcohol strength caps other old laws, the land of fizzy yellow water is going big for the good-beer gumbo—and reviving a proud brewing past.
ITINERARIES
1-DAY Nola Brewing Co., the Bulldog, Lüke, Avenue Pub, Cooter Brown’s, Maple Leaf Bar
3-DAY One-day itinerary plus Abita Brewing Co., Great Raft, and Bayou Teche
7-DAY Three-day itinerary plus Creature Comforts, The Brick Store Pub, J. Clyde, Twain’s
LOUISIANA
New Orleans
THE AVENUE PUB
1732 St. Charles Ave. • New Orleans, LA 70130 • (504) 586-9243 • avenuepub.com • Established: 1989
SCENE & STORY
It’s not necessary to call ahead or plan your visit to New Orleans’s best beer bar because it never closes—ever. It has been said that the world-class beer bar in the Lower Garden district, open 24/7 every day of the year, doesn’t even have locks on the doors. After her father died, owner Polly Watts took over and rechristened the place in 2006 after her father died and turned this once seedier spot into a real destination for beer lovers everywhere. The charming, slightly ramshackle building overlooking St. Charles dates back to the 1840s and boasts a huge wraparound upstairs porch, making it a coveted spot during Mardi Gras, as the parade passes directly by. On the first level several black chalkboards dense with American craft beers (and some truly wonderful imports) frame a relatively narrow bar area with seating nearby. A stairwell leads up to a coffeehouse-esque room with antique furniture, framed pictures, and the second bar area with its own menu.
The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Page 39