University of Virginia Press
2018 Lee Graves
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
First published 2018
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Graves, Lee, 1948 author.
Title: Virginia beer : a guide from colonial days to crafts golden age / Lee Graves.
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018024173 | ISBN 9780813941714 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813941721 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: BeerVirginiaHistory.
Classification: LCC TP573.U6 G723 2018 | DDC 641.2/309755dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024173
All photographs are by the author, save for the following: page 21, photo reproduction courtesy of Chris Johnson; page 22, courtesy of Portner Brewhouse; page 62, courtesy of Charlie Papazian; second color plate (first page of gallery), Valentine Richmond History Center.
Map by Nat Case, INCase, LLC.
Cover art based on Blue Ridge Parkway autumn sunset over Appalachian Mountains layers (background; WerksMedia) and beer texture (top; Pogonici)
Preface
Remember this moment: 6 p.m. sharp on Friday, September 8, 2017. Thats when I stop by Bedlam Brewing, one of several businesses in an otherwise nondescript strip on Augusta Avenue in Staunton, to mentally kick up my heels and draw a line to end one of the most incredible adventures of my life.
Bedlam is the 150th brewery Ive visited in Virginia. Thats out of 213, with 30 in planning, according to an August 2017 announcement at the Virginia Craft Brewers Fest in Charlottesville. Five years ago, the number of breweries stood around 40, and now, while Im settling down in a seat at the bar and looking at the offerings at Bedlam, the Old Dominion has more breweries than any other state in the Southeast. North Carolina, with heavy hitters such as Oskar Blues, Sierra Nevada, and New Belgium, not to mention Ashevilles thriving array of small breweries, had been the headliner of the East Coast beer scene. Now Virginia gets at least a share of the spotlight.
New breweries are opening throughout the state every weekend. As I sit in Bedlam, Reason opens its taproom in Charlottesville tomorrow. Intermission opened in Richmond last week. Beer events crowd the calendar as well. Stone celebrates its one-year anniversary of brewing in Richmond with a Throw Down tomorrow. A huge Battle of the Beers will be waged in Virginia Beach tomorrow, just as Basic City hosts the Virginia Street Art Festival in Waynesboro.
Paint the sunset. Take a photograph of a river. They are frozen moments trying to capture fluidity, change, and dynamic energy. This is what this book aims to doportray, convey, and give context to the shifting and evolving landscape of beer and its story in Virginia, from the colonists who landed at Jamestowncarrying with them attitudes about beer dating to the dawn of civilizationto brewers such as Bedlams Mike McMackin, whose appreciation of the art, science, and history of his craft extends the story one generation more.
I couldnt ask for a better place and time to freeze the frame and celebrate the journey thats taken me here. McMackin is a natural publican. Details of the beers flow from him as if each were a child. The Farmhouse Ale is not a saison but a pay beer, he says, as workers were paid in beer in the part of Belgium that is the brews heritage. The DIPA is hopped with Centennial, Cascade, Columbus, and Simcoe varietals. The numbers say its rated at 100 IBUs, but perceived bitterness is lower. I get it at 85, he says. And none of the beers has a clever name or personal referenceno puns, no homages to pets, no local ties. DIPA is just DIPA. Nothing is named, because Im always tweaking them.
The brewerys name does have a story. Bedlam was a nineteenth-century insane asylum in London, and you can understand the connection. A former high school history teacher, McMackin left a salaried job to realize his passion for brewing. Ive been homebrewing for more than twenty years, he says. I left a full-time, salaried job. I must be crazy. Setting up the brewery, the taproom, and the pizza oven; getting label approvals; dialing in his one-barrel system; establishing a presence in the industrys explosive growthits easy to understand Bedlams motto: Embrace the chaos.
I feel an affinity for his outlook. Tracking the history and evolution of Virginia beer; witnessing how craft beer has affected a cultural shift in societys perspective of this ancient beverage; keeping up to speed on newbies; trying the latest releases; reading about technological advances; writing about people and their stories, their creativity, their challenges and achievementsthroughout my journey Ive experienced a touch of chaos as well. But my personal beer trail has gone from the mountaintop setting of Dirt Farm to the urban swirl of Big Lick, from Tidewaters Wasserhund, where surfboards hang from the ceilings, to Richmonds The Veil, where the ceiling opens to welcome wild yeast. Ive tasted hundreds of beers and met scores of friendly, dedicated people who believe in the spirit of community.
McMackin, a New York native, says something along those lines that heartens me, something that has been a constant among brewers since I began writing about beer in 1996. This business is fantastic, he says. When somebody calls somebody else needing something, nine times out of ten theyre not blowing smoke. Sure its competitive, but if they need help, you help them. That spirit of collaboration and collegiality has been a defining characteristic of brewers and true beer aficionados. Ive been blessed to be a part of it.
So even though I draw the line at 6 p.m. on September 8, 2017, and click the shutter for a snapshot, the current of events will keep flowing beyond the pages of this book. New breweries will open; some older ones will close. Trends will come and go. But one things for sure: Beer will always be here.
Method and Madness
My method for choosing which breweries to profile in chapters 5 through 12 is simpleI had none. It would have been impossible to profile each of the 213 breweries that existed when I visited number 150. (For candors sake, I did visit a couple more breweries before adding the final words to the manuscriptand Ill never stop exploringbut in terms of current events, that was where I had to draw the line in order to complete the work for timely publication. That said, the attentive reader will notice updates of major developments.) Some breweries were obvious choices to spotlight because of their veteran status, their size, their stature in the community, and their prominence in the larger industry. Others appealed because of their individual stories. I also tried to be evenhanded in representing each region by targeting different pockets within each area and by profiling breweries that arent mentioned in the text or pictured in the photographs elsewhere in the book. Virginia is not a small state, and many breweries draw on local history for beer names, so capturing regional flavor became a challenge for me. I wanted to portray the states tastes of places in as many ways as possible. And after visiting 150 breweries and tasting beers at each, I believe that the overall standard of brewing in Virginia is high.
Another point to keep in mind: I have tasted the beers singled out in the
