Several breweries across the state are hosting events as part of West Virginia Craft Beer Week, which kicked off this past weekend, June 15-16. Some in the craft beer industry are celebrating new regulations that the state legislature passed earlier this spring.
This week — to coincide with West Virginia Day — breweries and restaurants across the state are celebrating the state’s steadily growing craft beer industry.
In 2016, there were 15 breweries in the state. That number has nearly doubled in just three years, despite regulatory challenges and the state’s dispersed population.
Even though West Virginia doesn’t have big cities to draw crowds, brewers have found a small but loyal customer base here, said West Virginia Brewers Guild President Aaron Rote.
“There’s a lot of cultural centers like Fayetteville, Thomas, Davis, Morgantown, and I really think the breweries you see in those areas really tie into their local culture really well,” Rote said.
Some craft brewers brand their beers with names and logos that reference local folklore — like Zona’s Revenge, made by Greenbrier Valley Brewing in Lewisburg. That witbier is named after Zona Heaster who was murdered in the late 19th century and ultimately became the basis for a popular ghost story in the area.
There’s also Big Timber Brewing Company in Elkins, and Stumptown Ales in Davis, which both feature imagery that celebrate timber, a major economic driver in the region.
Across West Virginia, many craft breweries are closely tied with their local, host communities. The regional nature of the state’s craft brewers required event planners for the first state-wide craft beer week to think creatively.
Some breweries will be releasing special beers, some will give tours, and others are featured in tap takeovers, events in which a restaurant only serves a specific brewery’s beer for a night.
Summer Kickoff
This week’s events are also helping to kick off the summer season, said Kevin Ayers, the owner of the Wheeling-based brewery Brew Keepers.
“Think of it like the Memorial Day of craft beer,” he said. “Memorial Day kicks off the summer, even though it isn’t summer yet. Summertime is the most popular time to drink.”
Ayers said a lot of breweries in the state are located in towns with tourist destinations or are near entrances to the state, and that’s no accident. He said craft breweries could play a role in boosting tourism.
“The more things we can bring into this state to do the more people are going to stop, and they’re going to hunt craft breweries down,” Ayers said.
Rote, with the West Virginia Brewers Guild, said to cap West Virginia Craft Beer Week, beer drinkers across the state are encouraged to participate in a “beer toast” on Friday, June 21 at 5:00 p.m.
“Whether you’re at a restaurant or you’re on your back porch drinking a beer at 5 o’clock there’ll be kind of like a beer toast,” he said.
Regulatory Changes
According to Rote, craft beer fans in West Virginia do have something to toast about this year. Earlier this spring, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 529, which increased the cap on alcohol by volume — from 12 to 15 percent. The new law also removes a limit on growler sales.
Rote said he’s hoping these new regulations will help lead to even more growth in the craft beer industry.
“This is just a nice way to cheers maybe a nice turning point for us,” he said.
While both Ayers and Rote both say they feel like West Virginia craft beer started a little behind the curve, they both believe the state is catching up, with no signs of slowing down yet.
To learn more about West Virginia Craft Beer Week or to find a local event, go to wvcbw.com and click on their events tab.
Peanut butter stouts, guava sours, hazy double IPAs, pomegranate ales – these are just a few experimental beers to come out of the craft beer craze in recent years.
According to the National Brewer’s Association, this expanding industry started in the 1990s but didn’t gain momentum until 2010, making it relatively new. Today there are more than 7,000 commercial breweries in the country.
In West Virginia, that growth came even later. In the state there are 30 craft breweries, but in 2011 there were just five.
All the craft breweries started with a home brewer – someone who experiments in brewing at home, and usually it’s a person who genuinely loves the science and craft behind beer.
Homebrewers in West Virginia have been experimenting with beer for decades, and they have been collaborating in community-organized home brew clubs.
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A beer on tap at restaurant and bar El Gran Sabor in Elkins. Beer comes to be through six stages – milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting and conditioning.
There are 13 clubs in the state, one of which is in Elkins. It formed in 2009, and they call themselves the ‘Appalachian Brew Club.’
“When you’re around other brewers, you pick up learning how to brew in a really short time. It’s a super-fast starter for people,” Jack Tribble, Appalachian Brew Club co-founder, says.
He has been brewing since the 90s. He and several other members like to get together at one another’s homes to brew.
On this day, they have met up to brew a New England IPA.
DIY Beer
In the kitchen, the stove is covered in giant, stainless steel pots, and the counters are filled with different yeast strains and a variety of grains. There is an oversized Gatorade cooler nearby for pouring beer into, which allows the liquid to steep in the grains.
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Scott Biola lifting the grains out of the wort. After this step the liquid will be transferred to the giant pot on the stove.
The room is filled with a distinct, yet polarizing smell. Jack gives his thoughts on the aromas.
“I think it has a sweet cereal smell that has a grainy backbone to it. It smells great,” he says.
But longtime club member Rick Newsome says it is an acquired scent.
“Brewers love the smell. Walk into a big brewery and they’re brewing a porter and it smells heavenly. Unless you’re my wife,” Newsome says.
While the club brews, they sample other regional beers.
A lot of people enjoy beer, but these guys love beer. For Rick Gauge, it is like a creative science.
“It’s a great bunch of people to hang out with and talk about beer and they, like me, nerd out about the specifics and the details and not just oh this tastes good, but why? What hops are used and what’s the malt bill like?” Gauge says.
There are six stages in the brewing process – milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting and conditioning.
The Elkins club is at the end of the mashing stage, where the enzymes from the grains are converting to sugar. At this point, it is not quite beer, but a sugary liquid called Wort.
They are trying to get the Wort to an exact temperature. Too hot or too cold and the beer changes type.
“How geeky do you want to be?,” Newsome says. “There are two enzymes that convert those starches into sugars – alpha amylase and beta amylase. Beta works in a range from 140 to 150 degrees. Alpha works from 150-160.”
In simpler terms, he is saying in order to convert the yeast to sugar the liquid needs to be between 140 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
As a club, they get together several times a year to brew, but they meet up once a month just to talk beer. Clinton Hamrick, one of the members, says home brewers tend to be on the cutting edge of new styles.
“The home brewers I think are a little more on the leading edge of what’s going to be popular this summer or the following year,” Clinton says.
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Tammy and Clinton Hamrick enjoy a beer on the bar crawl. The Appalachian Brew Club members all say Tammy can “out-brew them all.”
It is a lifestyle. They even plan their vacations around beer, calling them “beercations.”
“We go with brewers and meet brewers over there and have a really good time, and all of a sudden they are pulling out stuff from the backs of their refrigerators and we have a really good time,” Jack says.
They also brew beers for competitions.
Homebrew Competitions
Homebrewers recently competed in a competition in Morgantown, called the Coal Cup Homebrewer’s Competition, which featured stouts and porters from regional homebrewers.
Inside the hotel conference room where the competition was held, judges quietly sip beers. They are voting on several categories – most boozy, coolest growler and weirdest flavor. In another room, memebers of the public gather to taste beers for the people’s choice competition.
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A beer entered in the People’s Choice at the Coal Cup Homebrewer’s competition. Some of the categories included most boozy, coolest growler and weirdest flavor.
Jason Croston, a homebrewer in the Morgantown club, is competing with a Christmas porter and Bourbon barrel porter. He says brewing beer is something that has been passed down in his family..
“My dad actually grew grapevines on the side of our house and used to make wine. And one of my grandfathers was a brewer way back. It’s in our family history and it’s in our blood,” he says.
There are two types of homebrewers – those who want to pursue opening a brewery and those who do not. Jason is the former. He hopes to open his own brewery one day, and even has a name picked out.
“I grew up in the backwaters in Cheat Lake, hence the name of my brewery when I do open –‘Backwaters Brewing,” Jason says.
But not all homebrewers want to take that path. Chris Eberlin from Cumberland, Maryland says brewers can lose their freedom with regulation. He gave an example of his friend who makes experimental beers.
“He’ll just grab roots off the ground and throw them in and maybe some bark off a tree, and sometimes you get duds and sometimes you get really good flavors,” Chris says. “The big challenge with commercial beer is you have to appease a big group of people. As a home brewer, I have the ability to go crazy because I’ve only brewed one to five gallons of beer. So I can make something horrendous and dump it and it’s only a little bit of time and money I wasted. But as a commercial brewer that could be the difference between life or death.”
All the home brewers spend the day tasting each other’s beers, waiting to hear how they placed in the competition.
Overall, the Appalachian Brew Club place second in the Coal Cup competition.
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From left to right, Lindsey and Chris Eberlin and Tammy and Clinton Hamrick. They were competing with their beers at the Coal Cup Homebrewer’s competition.
The Bar Crawl
Back in Elkins, the brewers club members go on a bar crawl to taste some of the local beers on tap. On this day, they start at a local restaurant and bar El Gran Sabor.
Clinton Hamrick tastes a new beer on tap.
“It tastes like figs, little bit of raisin, woody, sweet, slight caramel – it’s good,” he says.
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The Appalachian Brew Club members during their bar crawl in Elkins. They like to try all kinds of beers to keep their palates up to date.
Whether it is making their own beer, trying other beer or taking part in competitions, home brewers simply love beer. Unlike commercial brewers, these guys are not in it for the money. They cannot legally sell you a beer, but they will try to excite your palate.
“I genuinely believe there is a beer out there for everyone,” Rick Gauge says. “People who say they don’t like beer, I make it my personal mission to find them a beer they like. Beer can taste like anything. The people that say they don’t like beer just haven’t tried the right one.”
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Rick Newsome has brewed beer on and off since the 90s. Today’s burgeoning craft beer industry had yet to take off in the 90s.
This story is part of an Inside Appalachia episode exploring the alcohol culture and industry in Appalachia.
Tickets have gone on sale for the Second Annual WV Craft Brew Festival in April intended to showcase West Virginia’s growing craft beer sector at the state fairgrounds outside Lewisburg.
State Fair CEO Kelly Collins says 65 state craft brews were featured at last year’s festival along with music and food.
Collins says the April 28 festival is a fundraiser for the Lewisburg Rotary and State Fair of WV Scholarship Funds.
General admission tickets cost $28.30 for eight beer samplings, the music and a mug.
Marshall University is expanding beer sales at home football games.
The university Board of Governors on Tuesday approved the sale of beer in six sections on the west side of Joan C. Edwards Stadium. The university says in a news release that security measures will be increased in those sections.
Beer had been sold since 2005 in the stadium’s Big Green Room and could not be taken outside.
Marshall opens the season Sept. 10 at home against Morgan State.
A push to let West Virginia restaurants and other businesses serve alcohol on Sunday mornings has been approved by the West Virginia Senate.
Senators unanimously passed a bill that would move the start of Sunday alcohol sales from 1 p.m. to 10 a.m. In the past, the Senate has approved the bill, but it has failed for several years in a row in the House.
Restaurants, distilleries and wineries are among the businesses that would be able to sell alcohol earlier.
The bill would also lift the current ban on retailers selling liquor between midnight and 8 a.m., or selling on Sundays and Christmas.
