Amid much fanfare and anticipation, Brevard Brewing Co. is set to tap into the community's thirst for craft beer when it opens its downtown doors Monday afternoon.
Owner and brewer Kyle Williams is putting off the final touches on his new establishment — more artwork, additional seating, live music — so he can open as soon as possible and start pouring the beer.
"People are excited — they've been waiting for months, and they want me to open as much as I want to open," said Williams, who added that Brevard Mayor Jimmy Harris called him Monday offering support. "Everybody from bar and restaurant owners, they can't wait to get a keg for their place, and the local people want to come here to drink. Everybody is excited."
With nearly 600 "likes" already on Facebook, BBC's arrival as the county's first brewery comes at a time when craft beer is abuzz in Western North Carolina. Hendersonville's first brewery, Southern Appalachian — which was required by a previous law to open as a private club last year — has more than 5,000 members as it approaches its first anniversary celebration next weekend.
Asheville, meanwhile, has been voted "Beer City USA" three years running in an online poll, and two of the three largest microbreweries in the country — Sierra Nevada and New Belgium — have chosen WNC for their respective East coast expansions.
"For an area that's surrounded by craft beer, and the fact that you have two major companies coming here, it's nice that Brevard can now be a part of that," said Madrid Zimmerman, executive director of Heart of Brevard, which focuses on downtown economic development.
Zimmerman said her nonprofit sees BBC as a "magnet" to attract other like-minded businesses that distinguish a community with their locally made products. For a place like Brevard that relies heavily on outdoors-related tourism, the brewery will give visitors an added reason to come downtown.
"Being able to have our own craft beer here, especially in the downtown, is a good signal to send to those people that do come to enjoy our outdoors, because many of them don't make it to the downtown," she said. "They get to the Pisgah Forest intersection and they see the Walmart, they see the Pizza Hut, they see a few signs that say ‘Pisgah Forest Ranger Station/Cradle of Forestry' and they go in that direction, and they actually see some ‘city limits' signs for Brevard and they go, ‘Oh, this is it?' So for us, anything that can help us connect the outdoor recreation to the downtown is really important, and this is one way to do it."
The brewery is at 63 E. Main St., between Kiwi Gelato and Brevard Delicatessen, in the space formerly occupied by Jason's Main Street Grill and then Docks restaurant.
Williams, a former brewer at Pisgah Brewing Co. in Black Mountain, said he envisions a laid-back atmosphere at the tasting room — "someplace you can come after work and unwind."
There will be five beers on draft — an American IPA, American red ale, American premium lager, Munich dunkel and BBC's flagship, Bohemian pilsner, a lower-alcohol brew that reflects Williams' passion for European-style lagers.
"It's my favorite beer," he said. "It's a good session lager — it's light enough to drink all day long but it's got a ton of flavor in it, so it's a very well-rounded beer in that respect."
Williams said the pilsner strikes a balance between the two extremes that American brewers continue to trend toward: Lighter, watered-down, adjunct-filled products from the brewing giants, and super-hopped, high-alcohol ales from the microbreweries, "where if you have one of them it knocks you on your butt, and then you're done."
"I'm trying to get something good and drinkable and tasty, but also nice and light," he said, "and the best way to do that is to make German-style lagers."
