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Cross-pollination: C’ville to RVA and back

Charlottesville-born Champion Brewing opened a Richmond location in 2017. Photo: Ash Daniel

Is love in the air? It appears so–at least between the cities of Richmond and Charlottesville, as witnessed by the number of businesses that have decided to open locations in both cities. Charlottesville, with its beautiful setting and college town vibe, has long made lists of best places to live and work. And in the past few years, Richmond has experienced a renaissance of sorts, with praise seemingly pouring in weekly for its long-underrated, still burgeoning arts, dining, and entrepreneurial scene. So it’s not surprising that a mutual admiration society has developed between the two cities.

Hardywood Park Craft Brewery and Sugar Shack donuts, both born in the River City, added Charlottesville locations on West Main Street–Hardywood in February 2017 and Sugar Shack in June 2018 (bringing with it sister business Luther Burger not long after).

Also coming to Charlottesville in early 2020: Quirk Hotel, which first debuted in Richmond in 2015. Why are they interested in C’ville? “First and foremost, the numbers indicate that Charlottesville is a stronger hospitality market than Richmond,” says Quirk Hotel co-owner Ted Ukrop. “Second, UVA is a major and sustainable economic and cultural engine. Having said that, there are also plenty of innovative companies, organizations, and people that align with Quirk’s brand.” The proximity to Hooville–just an hour away–also made a second Quirk location appealing, Ukrop adds.

Meanwhile, Richmond has already experienced an influx of Charlottesville-based businesses, like Roots Natural Kitchen (opened July 2018 in the VCU area), Three Notch’d Brewing Company (opened in 2016 in Scott’s Addition as the RVA Collab House), and Citizen Burger Bar (also opened in 2016, in Carytown). The city’s developing reputation as a supportive, destination craft beer scene was a big draw for Hunter Smith, who founded Champion Brewing in Charlottesville and opened a Richmond location in January 2017 on Grace Street downtown.

“The two cities and their respective governments operate quite differently, which was informative from a business perspective, and has helped me to evaluate additional locations,” says Smith. “I appreciate [chef] Jason Alley from Pasture and Comfort for introducing me to the beautiful former bank space we’re now lucky enough to occupy.”

Up next? Starr Hill Brewery, which is opening Starr Hill Beer Hall & Rooftop in Richmond’s Scott’s Addition this summer. Also coming soon: Common House, the “contemporary social club” that opened in C’ville in 2017, will make the RVA’s Arts District its home sometime in 2019. You’ll be able to find the newest Common House at 305 W. Broad St., just steps away from the original Quirk Hotel.

“Richmond feels like it’s in the midst of a cultural revolution that we are anxious to participate in,” says Common House co-founder Derek Sieg. “The food is world-class, the art scene is electric, and the energy in the entrepreneur community rivals that of any city its size.” While Sieg says his team has been looking at other creative markets in the Southeast in anticipation of growth, the proximity to Charlottesville helped clinch the second location.

“We have a lot of Richmond-based members who use Common House as a landing spot when they’re in Charlottesville, and vice versa, so we see this cross-pollination firsthand and look forward to being a fruit of that pollination ourselves,” he says.

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Living

Charlottesville breweries are full of fall beer options

Brasserie Saison is celebrating the season with German beers that eschew the traditional less-than-desirable Oktoberfest offerings from Munich, instead pouring dark, heavy American lagers that taste “far better than the real thing.” Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

What makes for a good fall beer? Extra body? Darker malt? Pumpkin spice? Every brewer and brewery in Charlottesville has their own ideas about this. So I grabbed a friend and visited five local breweries to see what their takes on fall beers are—and whether they shied away from the polarizing pumpkin beer.

At Reason Brewery up Route 29, I ordered a pumpkin beer. “We don’t have one,” responded Mark Fulton, one of Reason’s founders.

Good. I think pumpkin beer is usually terrible. And what Reason is offering for fall is a black lager, with a heft perfect for cooler weather. It’s on tap at the brewery and they intend to begin distributing it by the end of October. Hopped like a pale ale, the malt is dark but the ABV is still only around 5 percent.

“I personally am a dark beer fan,” Fulton said. “I think a lot of people sort of relate a darker beer with the cooler weather.”

Reason Brewery co-founder Mark Fulton says most people relate darker beer with cooler weather. The brewery currently has a black lager on tap that is hopped like a pale ale but has a rich flavor thanks to dark malt. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

Our next stop was Champion to taste its annual pumpkin beer called Kicking and Screaming—so named because the brewers had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making a pumpkin beer. But this year, they apparently kicked their way out of it, because the pumpkin beer has now been deep-sixed.

Good.

Sean Chandler, our bartender, presented us with three samples of proposed fall beers from Champion.  Biere de Garde, Fruit Casket (a double IPA) and Pacecar Porter.

The Biere de Garde was an instant winner: dark, spicy, richly blanketing the entire palate.

“My war is on pumpkin spice, not on spice or pumpkins,” says Jeff Diehm, whom I once again dragooned (he also helped determine the best grocery store bar in “Store credit: What’s the best grocery store bar in town?, August 2-8, 2017) into tasting beer with me. “I’d call it a very good after-dinner beer. It’s pretty spicy, and I think I would slip into something darker to close my evening.”

Champion’s Fruit Casket was a surprise. A double IPA brewed with agave that comes across neither as an IPA nor as gimmicky as it sounds. Big, full, less hoppy than you’d expect. This is what you want to sit around a bonfire with.

The Pacecar Porter is simultaneously dark and bright tasting. An unusual sharpness to the hops on top of a classic moderate porter.

Moving along to Three Notch’d Brewing’s new location at the IX Art Park, the first thing we noticed was that this place is pretty different from Three Notch’d’s first tasting location on Grady Avenue. The new place has a full-service kitchen, and executive chef Patrick Carroll focuses on local, sustainable ingredients and uses Three Notch’d’s craft beers and sodas in the food whenever possible.

The brewery’s Apple Crumb Amber Ale will be released soon, but it wasn’t available yet for us to taste. One of our bartenders made a face at the mention of pumpkin beer and didn’t even want to discuss it. What was available in an autumn mode was a Blue Toad Harvest Cider. It screamed cinnamon, but in a good way. You could put it on the table for Thanksgiving dinner and pair it with turkey and stuffing. We drank it alongside a shared platter of poutine, which featured fork-tender beef and fried cheese curds with onions and gravy covering a plate of fries. The perfect food to turn to halfway through a five-stop brewery crawl.

At Brasserie Saison, the Belgian restaurant and brewery on the Downtown Mall, a curious map of Europe was suggested by Munich-themed Oktoberfest banners and seasonal German beers offered alongside the classic Belgian offerings of steamed mussels and saison.

Manager Wil Smith served us tastes of the Oktoberfest beer and wouldn’t be baited into talking trash about pumpkin beers (which, fortunately, they aren’t making).

Traditional Oktoberfest beers in Munich are kind of crappy. In fact, that’s the whole point of them. Oktoberfest is a sloppy, drunken, week-long booze fest where a celebration of the palate isn’t exactly the point. American Oktoberfest beers, including Brasserie Saison’s, are often dark, heavy lagers that taste far better than the real thing.

Hardywood Pilot Brewery & Taproom’s Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale is a delightful departure from the pumpkin spice-laden beers typical of the genre. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

Taking the free trolley up West Main Street, we visited Hardywood’s new-ish outpost near the Corner.

Lora Gess, our bartender, poured us tastes of Hardywood’s Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale. Diehm and I gleefully prepared to hate it as much as we each hate all things pumpkin spice.

“A lot of people have really misconstrued pumpkin-flavored everything because of what it is,” explains Gess in defense of her employer’s pumpkin ale. “It’s a pumpkin-spice-latte-kind-of-society these days. But [this beer is] fresh, it’s mild. You get a pumpkin flavor but not a fake pumpkin flavor.”

And she was right. Somehow, Hardywood made a pumpkin beer that wasn’t awful. In fact, it was great.

It starts life as a traditional farmhouse saison to which Hardywood adds fresh pumpkin—not canned, not frozen—fresh. Instead of an insipid blend of pie-inspired spices, the notes of spice come from the flavor profile of the malts and esters produced by the yeast. Hardywood has brewed a masterful pumpkin beer that took us by surprise and almost made us stop talking trash about pumpkin beer.

Almost.

As the sun went down, we wound up back downtown at South Street Brewery. Finally, we found the holy grail we’d been looking for all day: Twisted Gourd, described by our bartender as a pumpkin chai beer.

“This is a pumpkin spice beer,” Diehm observes with his first sip. “I think if someone was looking for a pumpkin beer, this is where to go get it. It’s South Street, so it’s always a good solid beer. And it’s got pumpkin, so I hate it. But if this is what you are looking for, it’s a solid pumpkin beer. It’s the most honest pumpkin beer I’ve had.”

“This is cloying,” I respond as I taste it. “It’s terrible. But it’s so true to what it is.”

If you like pumpkin spice lattes, you’re gonna love this beer. But if you don’t, South Street has you covered with several other fine autumn beers, including Soft-Serv (tastes like chocolate soft-serve ice cream) and a barrel-aged version of their classic Satan’s Pony.

Categories
News

Against the grain: C’Ville-ian Brewing’s mea culpa

Part of manager Chris Kyle’s plan to improve C’Ville-ian Brewing Company includes not only new beer and new staff, but also live music and events. Photo by Ryan Jones

“Out of 56 places in Charlottesville to get beer, we’re rated number 56,” says Chris Kyle, the new manager of C’Ville-ian Brewing Company. “Dead last in all categories.”

That’s a strange thing for a business to admit, but the folks at C’Ville-ian have started a process of redemption akin to a 12-step recovery process. They have admitted that they have a problem, taken inventory, apologized to those they’ve hurt and started to make amends by brewing much better beer.

C’Ville-ian was opened in 2014 by Steve Gibbs, a veteran of the Iraq War. Gibbs had a vision of a brewery that would attract other military veterans and give them a place to feel comfortable. “He’s passionate about that as a cause,” says Kyle. “He thought that opening a veteran-owner brewery in Charlottesville would be a good idea. There’s a big learning curve in there, trying to do all of that by yourself.”

Things didn’t go well. One early reviewer noted, “The owner is still a little overbearing, but at least in a nice way. Brushing your teeth with guests around is a little weird. …The beer ranged from sophomoric to infected and terrible.”

In a town full of world-class breweries, the standard for beer is high. C’Ville-ian became a notorious flop. The bar was dirty, the atmosphere uncomfortable and the beer tasted like a bad homebrewing experiment. An investor filed a lawsuit against the business, which is ongoing.

Finally, Gibbs faced reality: While his vision for a veteran-oriented brewery on West Main Street might work, he needed to step away and put someone else in charge. Gibbs accepted a military contracting job in Afghanistan (he could not be reached for comment), asked his mother to make any major business decisions in his absence and hired Kyle to step into a situation reminiscent of an episode of “Kitchen Nightmares.”

Kyle cleaned house—literally and figuratively.

“When I came in the staff was a little demoralized,” says Kyle, who decided to part ways with all of them. “It had become common in their minds that this was the way it had always been and this was how it should be. The place was rundown, it was dirty, it was missing some type of character. …If you don’t have the best beer on the block and your place looks like crap, that’s a recipe for disaster. So that was an immediate thing.”

On a recent Thursday afternoon, the bar was visibly cleaner and remodeling had started. A wooden “firing line” had been built to safely accommodate a dart board for patrons’ use. American flags are still boldly displayed. Kyle poured a flight of beers that was nothing like the C’Ville-ian of old. Standouts included a pineapple wheat beer, perfect for hot weather, and a rye-based IPA.

Kyle brought in a contractor, brewer J. W. Groseclose, to design recipes for the new brews, and Alex Bragg handles the day-to-day brewing operations. Their challenge is making beer with equipment that can only brew beer in 25 gallon batches. Refrigerated space is limited, making the lagering process impossible. They can only make ales using yeasts that tolerate fluctuating temperatures.

“We’ve got about 12 to 14 days from grain to glass,” says Bragg. “That gives us just a little bit of time. We’ve just got to keep everything moving. It’s tight in here. We’re doing what we can with what we’ve got. …We had to come up with our own carbonation system.”

As they’ve turned the brewery around, business has picked up. Suddenly, C’Ville-ian has a problem that it’s never faced before—the prospect of running out of beer to sell. “We are at the limits of our environment in terms of what we can make,” says Kyle. At some point, they will have to figure out how to cram a larger, closed brewing system into a brewing space the size of a walk-in closet in Farmington.

Two new breweries are about to open nearby: Random Row Brewery on Preston Avenue and Hardywood, only three blocks from C’Ville-ian on West Main.

“Even though we’re on the same brewery map next to those places, we’re the only nano-brewery in Charlottesville,” says Kyle. “We don’t distribute and won’t distribute. Everything we make, we’re going to sell in this location.”