Devil in the details

When master brewer Jason Oliver uncrated all the brewing equipment purchased for Devil’s Backbone, a new brewery located in Nelson County at the base of Wintergreen Ski Resort, he discovered it was all in Japanese—literally, the instructions and dials to the thousands of pieces and parts were in Japanese with no English translation. The equipment

is state-of-the-art stuff—a German-designed Ziemmann 10HL 4-vessel decoction or infusion brewery—but the system originally was built in Japan for a Tokyo-based brewery and purchased from an international purveyor of used brewery equipment, hence all the Kanji characters.

“It was an interesting experience,” says Oliver of the several weeks it took for him to put the Godzilla of a brewing puzzle together. Though he can’t read Japanese, Oliver is an experienced brewer with over 10 years in the industry, a master brewing degree from University of California-Davis and a particular affinity for German-style brewing. Most recently, Oliver was a regional brewing supervisor for Gordon Biersch and spent six and a half years with that outfit.

Foreign language issues aside, Oliver says the equipment is top-notch. By contrast to the more English-style brewing equipment you’ll typically find at many U.S. small-batch breweries, Oliver says these high-end, German-style brewing tanks, tubes, dials and such “allow me to use more technique.”

“I have more control and can fine-tune the process,” he says.

Currently, Oliver has five beers on tap. Once the brewery reaches full capacity, Oliver says he’ll have seven different beers at any one time, with four core house brews—Wintergreen Weiss (a Bavarian-style Hefeweizen), Eight Point IPA (an American-style pale ale), Helles Golden Lager and a Viennese-style amber lager—always available.

Now, it’s fitting that the brewhouse has such an interesting history, because the  walls of the lodge-y-looking brewery and restaurant building itself could tell us many stories of their formers lives—if they could talk, that is, in English. The timbers and basic structure are newly engineered by Lindal Cedar Homes; however, the rusty tin roofing on the walls came from an old dairy barn in Maryland; the wood flooring is recycled from a tobacco barn in Pennsylvania; the tables, banquet seating and booths are all made of recycled wood from a horse farm in Uppersville, Virginia; and the stonework is made of local river rock. Oh, and the place is decorated with lots of mounted animal heads from owner Steve Crandall and fellow local hunters’ pursuits—so, you know, another form of repurposing.

Crandall, who owns Tectonics Customs Homes (the builder of the brewery, incidentally), together with his partners, plans to develop a large tract of land there at the base of Wintergreen into a “green” and pedestrian-friendly residential and retail community called Glen Mary. Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company is the flagship business and the first to be built. Devil’s’ General Manager Chris Trotter tells us that Crandall and friends granted a portion of the site back to Nelson County for the possible purpose of building a skate park. “The plan is to make this area the Virginia Jackson Hole,” says Trotter, who is referring, of course, to über cool resort town Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is beloved almost as much for its dining, entertaining and non-skiing recreations as it is for its amazing slopes and powder.

So speaking of having something for everyone, the brewery also serves a guest micro-brew on tap at all times as well as your weenie beer drinkers’ favs (Bud Light, etc.) There’s also a wine list that includes several selections from nearby Nelson County wineries.

As for the food, Chef Shawn Goodwin calls it “Nuevo Cowboy” cuisine. Think hardy, beer-battered and Southwest influences. Goodwin is using lots of local goodies, such as local beef from Black Eagle Farm in Piney River. The cattle are grass fed but finished off with, get this, the spent grains from the brewery’s brewing process. How’s that for symbiosis?