Something Old, Something Brewed

Craft breweries revive historic sites that time forgot

April 1, 2017 12:00 AM

Microbreweries of the mountains are peddling more than pints these days. The Smokies’ national acclaim as a craft-beer destination has led the burgeoning microbrewery scene on a quest for expansion, one that’s intersecting with the region’s rich history. For this issue, we visited three breweries that are breathing new life into once-iconic historic sites. A shuttered train depot, a rural dairy farm and a Civilian Conservation Corp camp are all being revived as destination breweries that serve up cold brews with a side of history.

Down on the farm: Fonta Flora brewery reclaims the agricultural heritage of beer

For decades, the pastoral soundscape of bluebirds and barking dogs in the foothills community of Nebo, N.C., has been punctured by an occasional splintering crash reverberating across the valley.

It’s another plank sheering off the Whippoorwill dairy barn and clattering to the ground, each ricochet a nostalgic reminder of the fading agrarian heritage.

A piece of that heritage will soon be revived, however, thanks to the back-to-the-land motto of a local craft brewery.

Fonta Flora based in nearby Morganton, N.C., has purchased the abandon Whippoorwill dairy farm with plans to turn the long-dormant property into a farmhouse brewery and till the land once more. The lofty mission is a big leap for a small hometown brewery.

“A lot of things are easy. The things that you do that are hard is what makes the difference,” says David Bennett, one of Fonta Flora’s owners who grew up in Morganton. “You take some steps now that are arduous, but we have a long-term vision.”

Fonta Flora’s beer is inspired from the land. A farm-to-mug brewery with a penchant for the locally-grown, Fonta Flora hangs its hat on seasonal ingredients born from the Appalachian landscape.

Reclaiming the long-latent farm for a craft brewery is iconic.

Back from the dead: Burial Beer Co. to restore the legacy of former CCC camp as destination brewery

Jess Reiser sidled up to the stoop of a rustic, clapboard building, riffled through a key ring and opened a door to history.

“It has a lot of soul and character,” Reiser says, her eyes drifting upward to the giant lag bolts and sturdy, hand-hewn beams buttressing the story above.

For decades, this historic Civilian Conservation Corps camp has been hidden in plain sight. It’s spitting distance from the hustle-and-bustle of the posh Biltmore Village district of Asheville, North Carolina, yet worlds away from the throngs of tourists strolling the boutique shops and upscale restaurants.

Burial Beer Co. has a vision to revive the legacy of this forgotten historic site as a destination brewery.

“An opportunity to bring back something that was important to this area once upon a time, that just really fits with our brand,” says Reiser, co-owner of Burial Beer Co. “It’s a tribute to something that once was.”

Legions of men were based at the CCC camp while building the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1930s. They lived in dorms, ate in a mess hall, and were trucked back-and-forth daily to the parkway grade, where they toiled by hand to cut the scenic motor road through the remote and rugged mountains above Asheville.

“This property pretty much went dormant,” Reiser says. “It was abandon and over-grown.”

The repurposed buildings on the two-acre site will not only house brewing operations, but also a two-story craft beer bar and stand-alone restaurant.

At its heart, however, the CCC camp restoration project is driven by the raw need for more space. Maxed out at its downtown tap room, the Burial team was eager to expand its production capacity.

The old CCC camp sits on two-acres, with a sprawling collection of buildings. One seems to be an old dorm. One was some sort of machinery shed. Another was a sign shop where the Parkway’s first signs were made. But much is left to conjecture.

“We don’t know the full history of each building,” Reiser explains.

The important thing now is what each building could be retrofitted for. Aside from the bar, restaurant and brewing operations, site schematics had to accommodate a warehouse for finished kegs and cans awaiting shipment and a storehouse for grain and raw ingredients.

Becky Johnson photo

With Burial’s large, new brewing system now humming full tilt, the focus has now shifted to the build-out of the accessory buildings. It’s been an all-hands-on-deck affair. The team has left their comfort zone of fermenting tanks and hoses and taken up circular saws and nail guns.

“Burial is so bricks and mortar that every employee has literally helped build it,” says Erin Jones, Burial’s marketing director. “The brewers have been able to build their own space. So it forged a real connection to what we’re creating.”

Doubling as brewers and construction workers has been taxing, but the team has grown closer to each other, as well as the brewery’s mission.

Despite being dormant for decades, the hodge-podge of buildings scattered across the two-acre site were in surprisingly good shape. The buildings have good bones, both structurally and aesthetically.

The rustic beams, hewn plank siding and gnarled wooden floor-boards were prized assets to be showcased.

While the property has been vacant, it has had a caretaker. A local church bought the site from the U.S. Forest Service in the 1990s in hopes of renovating it for a retreat center. It never came to be, but the church kept the buildings stable and in good repair over the decades, before eventually selling to Burial last year.

The climb from upstart to self-actualized has happened quickly for Burial, but it wasn’t happenstance. Since tapping their first batch four years ago, the Burial team has worked toward the vision now coming to fruition.

“We always planned to expand but our goal was to grow organically and get to this size eventually,” Reiser says.

This isn’t Burial’s first growth-spurt. Ask the brewers about their expansion, and they’ll clarify first before answering: expansion I or expansion II?

It’s not the first revitalization under Burial’s belt either. Breweries ignited the renaissance of Asheville’s South Slope over the past few years. But the downtown fringe district was still tagged with “up-and-coming” status when Burial opened its tap room there in 2013.

Burial’s non-descript downtown brewery, housed in an industrial-chic former HVAC repair shop, was an easy retrofit for their humble brewing equipment.

“We opened for less than what my wedding cost,” Reiser recalls.

At first, Burial was just another small-batch start-up in the crowded Asheville beer landscape. But it’s following soon outpaced its capacity. Burial only had enough beer to be open three days a week.

By the end of their first year, Burial was already eyeing an expansion, and soon grew from its one barrel system to 10. It finally had enough beer to can, and for bars and restaurants to have on tap.

Expansion II has been a far greater undertaking. From the dedicated 20-barrel production facility to extensive renovations of the rambling historic buildings, Burial gambled that the demand for their beer would justify the investment.

“If it were free and easy then everybody would do it,” Reiser says.

Since cranking up their new production system, Burial hasn’t had to shop around for distributors willing to stock their beer. They’ve been lucky to have a wait list, Reiser said.

“A lot of our relationships with retailers is built on something much purer than ‘I have product, take it from me, I need to sell it,’” Reiser says. “Opening small and growing from that size allowed us to form a lot of relationships.”

Reiser’s business partners and co-owners include her husband, Doug, and head brewer Tim Gormley. They moved to Asheville from Seattle a few years ago with the goal of starting a brewery. The chose Asheville intentionally for its sense of community

“Starting so small, we are very community-based. Doing everything ourselves from brewing to running the tap room, that gave us a foundation of getting to know our patrons,” Reiser says. “We have regulars, which I feel like is a dying breed. It is a place people come and feel like they belong. It is a much bigger thing than just a brewery.”

Ask craft beer connoisseurs what brew Burial is known for, they’ll be hard pressed to pinpoint a single signature beer. There are some favorites — Skillet Donut Stout and Bolo Coconut Brown Ale come to mind. But Burial doesn’t churn out the tried-and-true brews at the expense of experimentation.

“We don’t have any dedicated beers,” Reiser said. “We are always what rotating brands and circling back to them.”

It’s a conscious decision to stay inventive.

“With a production brewery, you can get pigeon-holed into brewing three or four beers,” Reiser says. “We could easily sell Skillet 365 days a year, but we decide that wasn’t what drives our passion. At least once a month we will be brewing a brand new beer here.”

During a canning day in late winter, an army of shiny cans shuffled along conveyor belts overhead. Stacked and cinched into six-pack rings, they slid down a stainless steel shoot.

True to the all-hands-on-deck mantra among the Burial team, marketing director Erin Jones threw back her scarf and pushed up her sleeves. Grabbing a spare rag, she jumped onto the assembly line and scooped up six-packs to wipe down before they went onto cardboard flats.

“We have brands that are our tried-and-true favorites, but we still like to play and experiment,” Jones says.

Laying tracks: Yee-Haw Brewing turns abandon railroad depot into flagship for Johnson City

Yee-Haw Brewing has a unique origin story for a microbrewery. It doesn’t start with a garage homebrew experiment, nor a drunken bet over a game of cards.

No, Yee-Haw has far tamer roots. It started with a bike ride to preschool.

“I would ride my bike down through town to take my children to preschool in the morning and pass the old train depots,” says Joe Baker, the founder of Yee-Haw Brewing in Johnson City, Tennessee. “It was just sad to me that these beautiful old train depots were just sitting there in disrepair. For a million reasons, it was calling to us to renovate them and create something special.”

Johnson City is anchored by two historic train depots. They were the hub of commerce and travel in their heyday, and the development of Johnson City hinged on them.

When they were shuttered and abandon, downtown slipped into an era of long, slow decline — a fate shared by so many downtowns across America. Luckily, Johnson City had Baker in its corner.

“They were both distressed and in such disrepair they would have been lost if something hadn’t been done,” Baker recalls. “This spectacular corridor of Johnson City was once bookmarked by these beautiful old train depots. It didn’t make sense to me, especially for a town like Johnson City that was built on the rails.”

So Baker bought them. He tackled the Clinchfield Railroad Depot first, renovating it to house the signature Southern diner Tupelo Honey Café, a regional chain with Asheville, North Carolina, roots. It became a formidable draw and a boon to downtown, but Baker was nagged by the feeling the job was only half done.

“Why didn’t we renovate both of them?” Baker says.

So he scooped up the old Tweestie depot next, and the vision for Yee-Haw brewery crystalized.

“We bought it with the specific intent of rehabilitating the building and bringing it back to life,” Baker says.

“It’s a demonstration to our commitment to building communities rather than a place that just makes and sells beer.”

The Tweetsie depot closed in the mid-20th century, but was occupied for the next 50 years by Free Service tire and auto shop. The railroad leased the property all those decades, and this is where Baker played another historic role: Negotiating a sale.

“It took some convincing to get them to sell it,” Baker says. “But I think they saw the value of preserving the historic element.”

No doubt a bargaining chip in Baker’s corner, the railroad depot was on its last leg.

“It was in total disrepair. Water was flowing freely through the roof into the building,” Baker recalls.

Renovating the 1891 depot would ultimately be a multi-million dollar project with lots of heavy lifting. Aside from housing the massive brewing equipment, it would need a bar and taproom, plus a commercial kitchen and restaurant — a spot ultimately claimed by the famed White Duck Taco of Asheville origins.

But Baker wanted to be compassionate toward the original structure, despite the added cost.

“If you look at the walls and the roof lines and the rafters, it took a lot of work to refurbish the roof system as it is, but the beams and the trusses that are in the building are the original materials that built that depot,” Baker says.