CRAFT BREWING EXPLODES IN CENTRAL VIRGINIA

BREW LOVE

Tapping into Central Virginia’s Thriving Craft Beer Culture

by Matt Ashare and Brent Wells |  
Published October 16, 2013

It’s a pleasantly cool Monday night in late September, and the mood at Apocalypse Ale Works is casually festive. Up the long ramp that leads around the back of a large, refurbished building that once housed the Forest Volunteer Fire Department, past the looming and fittingly fearsome Apocalypse logo wall painting, a handful of friendly folks are nursing pints of the house specialty — carefully crafted ales, brewed on premises in giant tanks, or kettles, that are just visible from a window adjacent to the bar inside a cozy tasting room. 

         But on this evening, the action is outside, in a field-sized backyard where the Miami Dolphins and New Orleans Saints are locked in a Monday Night Football battle that’s being screened against the wall of what appears to be a big barn. A few dozen patrons, pints in hand, have gathered for the occasion in a large, fenced-in area that’s been outfitted with a mismatched assortment of tables and chairs. Resident brewmaster Doug John, who opened Apocalypse with his brother Lee less than a year ago, holds court with a group of fellow Dolphins fans. A large greyhound prances about curiously. Oh, and there’s also an older gentleman, outfitted in what just might be a pair of genuine lederhosen, smoking a cigar off to the side.

Octoberfest, as it’s traditionally celebrated in Bavarian beer country, has arrived in Virginia just slightly ahead of the month of October, and the scene resembles nothing so much as an Americanized beer garden, where country charms and a laid-back atmosphere belie the seriousness with which the folks here regard the production and consumption of their beverage of choice. The woman pulling pints behind the bar inside may not look like an expert, but she has no problem whatsoever holding forth on the unique qualities of a Belgian “dubbel,” a strong, pleasantly sour style of brown ale that originated with Trappist monks. Apocalypse’s take on the dubbel is called Lustful Maiden. It was awarded a gold medal at the US Open Beer Championship in Atlanta this past July. 

Back outside at a table, a woman named Melissa sits with her husband Matt alongside the lederhosen-clad Jeff Kraber, an Apocalypse regular, enjoying a locally sourced stogie from 262 Cigars. “I’m not a beer drinker,” she admits, as she raises her glass. “But, I do love the stout here.”

Apocalypse Ale Works — which bills itself on Facebook as, “The first brewery in Forest, Virginia since Thomas Jefferson brewed in the 1800's at Poplar Forest” — is just the latest entrepreneurial venture of its sort to tap into the growing local demand and passion for bold brews. Take a drive out toward Nelson County on Virginia’s Route 151, and you’ll find the largely rural landscape dotted with an eclectic array of establishments devoted to the ancient alchemic art of crafting beer in many of its various guises.

Out in Afton, the Blue Mountain Brewery, a mini beer factory of sorts capable of producing up to 2500 barrels a year, sits nestled among the growing number of vineyards that make up what’s come to be known as “the Monticello Wine Trail.” Then there’s the homey Wild Wolf Brewery, a brewpub/biergarten centered around a quaintly renovated hundred-year-old schoolhouse building in Nellysford, on what local beer enthusiasts have begun referring to as “the Brew Ridge Trail.” And, in Roseland, not far from the Wintergreen vacation resort in the Blue Hills, Devils Backbone Brewing Company occupies a large, resort-like structure of its own that resembles, in rustic chic fashion, something of a cross between a ski lodge and a tobacco barn.

Add to that the Blue Toad Pub in Afton, which boasts over 90 micro-brewed treats representing all fifty of these United States, and the new Bold Rock Cidery and Brew Pub in Wintergreen, and you’ve got what amounts to a veritable brewery row along Route 151. Indeed, Devils Backbone hosted the inaugural Virginia Craft Brewers Cup in 2012, an awards’ festival at which the hosting brewery won “Best of Show” honors for its Schwartz Bier, a dark, German-style lager that most resembles the chocolate complexion of a stout. The brewers at Devils Backbone also brought a gold medal back to Virginia from Colorado’s Great American Beer Festival in 2012, an impressive feat that Blue Mountain Brewery pulled off in 2010 and 2011.

The proliferation of local craft breweries is a promising and, for beer enthusiasts, welcome reflection of a larger national trend toward a deeper appreciation for the art of beer. Home brewing isn’t just for hipsters anymore. And the days when you could walk up to a bar and order a generic beer (i.e., a Bud, Rolling Rock, or PBR), much less just grab a twelve-pack of something to chug, without thinking twice, appear to be numbered, as the taps and shelves become increasingly cluttered with niche brews, local varietals, and seasonal specialties. As for the mega-imports, when was the last time you saw someone drinking a bottle of Heineken? Seriously.

This year’s sold-out Great American Beer Festival, for example, featured over 3000 different brews from over 600 breweries, and tendered awards in 138 categories. At the 2013 US Open Beer Championship, over 2500 beers from around the world were entered in 68 categories. Even the much smaller, regionally oriented Virginia Craft Brewers Cup competition, which was held in August at Devils Backbone, drew a capacity crowd of 2,200-plus, and had 20 judges presiding over tastings of 137 beers from 32 breweries. Along with several other medals, Devils Backbone took “Best In Show” once again, this time for its Smokehouse Lager, while Blue Mountain got the gold for its popular Kölsh 151 and Classic Lager.

So, yeah, there’s a whole lot to choose from out there, and you really don’t have to go very far to find it. In fact, once you get past the numbers, the best way to take the growing pulse of Virginia’s thriving craft brew culture, is to hit the Brew Ridge Trail for a taste of what’s on tap.

We did just that on an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon on the last weekend of September, and found what looked to be a country fair-sized crowd gathering at Blue Mountain Brewery. There were at least half a dozen parking lot attendants directing the steady influx of traffic, and an estimated 200 vehicles parked in the lot surrounding the main grounds of the brewery, which are in turn flanked by Blue Mountain’s own hop fields. The expansive outdoor seating area was flush and lively with groups of friends and families with children and dogs, serious connoisseurs and casual tasters alike, as a bluegrass band fiddled away on a small stage and the busy waitstaff navigated the crowd with pizzas, burgers, and, of course, plenty of beer.

Blue Mountain clearly prides itself on locally sourced ingredients and food that’s just a bit fancier than it has to be: a pizza, for example, topped with bratwurst from Double H Farms in Wingina, caramelized onions, apples, mozzarella cheese, and a balsamic reduction. We opted for a heaping plate of spicy-sweet Thai chicken wings, and a “flight” of beers, which is craft-brew speak, borrowed from wine tastings, for a sampler selection. At Blue Mountain, a flight gets you nine 2.5-ounce servings of what’s on tap for just $8.

The masterbrewers at Blue Mountain have been at it since 2007, and, while they’re not afraid to be bold, they also have an appreciation for the subtleties of a good brew. In other words, they thankfully don’t feel the need to ratchet up the bitter hops and/or the sour malt as a means of projecting uniqueness — a critique of craft brews wasn’t all that uncommon a decade or two ago — or to go overboard with fruit and spice infusions to mark the passing of the seasons. Their Classic Lager is just that: a refreshingly crisp pilsner, the color of golden wheat, with a nice hit of hops that’s not annoying assertive. Balanced would be the word for it, as well as for the Kölsh 151, a marginally fruitier, light brew that has a touch of summer sweetness to it.

On the other end of the spectrum, Blue Mountain has a couple of audacious barrel-aged varieties that both have a no-holds-barred quality. Their Mandolin, a Belgium tripel-style ale, is a medium bodied brew with strong hints of oak and a good deal of sour-mash whiskey in its bite. The heavier, aptly dubbed Dark Hollow, is a muscular stout that has an even more pronounced bourbon flavor and an impressive alcohol by volume ratio of 10%.

Some of the other standouts on tap at Blue Mountain are the Full Nelson, a heavily hopped (i.e., openly bitter) pale ale that doesn’t hide any of its punch, and the Riprap Pale, a strikingly different brand of American pale ale ripe with citrusy notes. There was also a nicely nutty, amber toned Oktoberfest Lagerbeir, and we ran into a Charlottesville resident, who touted another seasonal Blue Mountain concoction. “My favorite right now is the Spooky,” she said. “It’s got the pumpkin, but it also has cocoa, and they age it in oak barrels, so it’s different from most pumpkin beer. It almost has a liquor flavor to it.”

Blue Mountain serves its brews by the glass and by the bottle onsite. Bottled six-packs of the more popular varieties are available to go. And, for the hardcore beer devotee, there are also growlers — craft-brew lingo for a 64 ounce refillable jug — available for anything on tap.

Down the road at Wild Wolf, which opened it doors just two years ago, we were greeted by a similar, family-friendly outdoor scene, albeit somewhat less frenzied, and a lively sports bar outfitted with the requisite hi-def projection screen and multiple TV monitors. Again, we opted for a flight of what was on tap, in this case a tasting set of five brews for five bucks. That afforded us a nice range of flavors, from the creamy, amber-toned balance of the Blonde Honey, to the sweet-and-sour caramel stylings of the Dry Stout, to the aromatic, smoke-and-whiskey tinge of the Wee Heavy ale.

As Wild Wolf proprietor Mary Wolf, whose son Danny is the resident brewmaster, pointed out, “That’s the beauty of craft beer. There’s so much variety, so many different flavors, and flavor profiles. There’s really something for everybody. I used to be a wine drinker, but I fell in love with craft beer. It’s all I drink now. I have several thousand bottles of wine that haven’t been touched for a while.”

Our final stop for the afternoon was Devils Backbone, where big white tents had already been set up on the brewery’s extensive grounds for the “Festy,” a three-day, family-friendly jamband festival that took place last weekend. The dining room was packed to capacity, and the bar was crowded, but we managed to find a corner from which to order our final flight, a selection of four house brews, including the 2012 World Beer Cup-winning Vienna Lager, an exceptionally smooth brew with a robust finish and a rich, amber color. We also had a taste of one of Devils Backbone’s signature brews, the Wintergreen Weiss, the Hefenweizen-style wheat beer that inspired Devils Backbone owner Steve Crandall to go into the brewing business back in 2009.

Like many of his fellow craft brewers in Central Virginia, Crandall now has a solid foothold in the national scene. As he reflected, “They all want a piece of the magic that’s been created here.” But, he also treasures the sense of community that craft brewing fosters at places like Apocalypse, Blue Mountain, Wild Wolf, and Devils Backbone. “I’ve always come back to the component of localness,” he says. “It enables people to come together and share each other’s company in a way that’s really positive.” And, of course, in way that promotes the public wearing of lederhosen.