You might say that a beer renaissance is under way in the Richmond region and Virginia.
Or it might be an all-out revolution, considering some of what’s on tap these days.
For instance, at the fast-growing Hardywood Park Craft Brewery in Richmond, where crowds turn out during tasting hours for the latest brewing magic, one of the newest beers on tap goes by the somewhat intimidating name of Chocolate Heat.
For the uninitiated, that’s a double chocolate milk stout beer, brewed with habañero and scotch bonnet peppers. It’s just one of Hardywood’s many artisanal ales, which include some milder brews for the less adventurous tongue.
At the Richmond area’s other burgeoning craft breweries, the beer menu has included brews spiced with lemongrass, cinnamon and nutmeg, and watermelon- and lime-flavored beer for summer crowds.
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As a craft beer wave sweeps the nation, at least three new microbreweries have opened in the Richmond area in less than two years, joining the already established Legend Brewing Co., which just marked its 19th year in business in South Richmond and has expanded its sales territory.
Two other craft breweries are expected to open in the Richmond region by this summer, and a handful of others are in the planning stages. In addition, local brewpub Extra Billy’s Smokehouse & Brewery in Chesterfield County has hired a new head brewer and is planning to offer new styles of beer starting this month.
Beer making is limited “only by what your imagination can handle,” said Sean-Thomas Pumphrey, another local craft brewer who, along with his wife, Lisa, is building a 4,100-square-foot brewery in the style of a Virginia horse stable overlooking their farm near the banks of the little Lickinghole Creek in Goochland.
The Pumphreys are growing hops, a flowering plant that is a key ingredient in beer. They’re also raising blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, boysenberries and sage to flavor some of the beers they plan to offer for visitors.
The local brewsare part of a cornucopia of craft beers from all over the world now populating the taps at local restaurants frequented by beer lovers, such as Capital Ale House, Richmond’s Commercial Taphouse, and Mekong, a West Broad Street restaurant in Henrico County that was voted best beer bar in the country last year on CraftBeer.com.
When Commercial Taphouse opened in 1993, “it was hard to find 15 beers” to stock, co-owner and founder James Talley said. “In those days, there wasn’t much local. You could get one or two Virginia beers.”
Now, “we have to constantly keep rotating our taps,” he said. “People are always asking, ‘What do you have new? What is next?’ ”
At specialty shops and some grocery stores, the beer shelves are being stocked with a growing variety of craft beers, including some from around Virginia such as Devils Backbone Brewing Co. in Nelson County, Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet and Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton.
It’s all good news for Jacob Brunow, director of the craft and import beer department at Henrico-based Brown Distributing Co.
In the beer market, “you are starting to see this diversified product coming out,” he said.
The U.S. market is still dominated essentially by one style of beer: the pale lager, made popular by decades of smart, big-budget marketing by large brewing companies.
The new craft breweriesare giving life to ales that for decades were mostly strangers to the American palate: the India pale ales, the English browns, the Scotch ales, the coffee stouts, and the Belgian Trappist-style ales, to name just a few.
“On the cereal aisle at the grocery store, you have lots of choices,” Brunow said. “Until recently, on the beer aisle you had only a few choices. You are going to see a whole lot of new choices in the beer category.”
The surge in diversity is coming from the microbreweries, generally considered breweries that produce fewer than 15,000 barrels a year, or about 465,000 gallons.
That’s a miniscule amount compared with the behemoths of the industry such as Anheuser Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing company by volume, which produced more than 10.5 billion gallons of beer worldwide in 2011.
Nearly 2,000 microbreweries, brewpubs and regional breweries were operating in the United States in 2011, the largest number since the 1880s, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group for independent brewers.
The association expects overall U.S. beer sales to be up slightly for 2012 after declines of about 1.3 percent and 1.2 percent in 2011 and 2010, respectively.
Microbreweries, however, have seen significant growth, increasing sales 13 percent by volume and 15 percent by dollars in 2011 from the previous year.
Even with that growth, it isn’t a shoo-in that most small breweries will make it.
A brewer can start producing beers to sell on a small scale with an investment in the “low five-figures,” said Paul Gatza, president of the Brewers Association.
“If you are going to make a business that you want to make money at, it is going to take a bigger investment,” he sad. “You are looking at six figures, and you are going to have a couple of years where you are not paying yourself much.”
Thanks to a changein Virginia law last year, microbreweries are nurturing a new revenue source.
The law, which overwhelmingly passed the General Assembly and was signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell in May, allows breweries to sell full glasses of beer without having a restaurant on-site.
With the change in the law, most local breweries now have tasting hours, and customers have turned out by the hundreds, and sometimes thousands.
The change also has made possible what some in the industry are now calling “nanobreweries,” operations that brew small volumes and may not distribute widely, but earn revenue by selling directly from the brewery.
“Being able to serve out of our tasting room helps increase sales — it helps with the cash flow,” said Trae Cairns, the 45-year-old founder and owner of Midnight Brewery in Goochland County.
Cairns credits the change in the law with helping him leave his previous job last year to devote himself full time to operating his brewery.
With so manynew brews entering the market, even the most devoted connoisseur might be tempted to worry that a beer bubble is developing in the marketplace.
Brunow says no, and other local beer watchers say the market for locally brewed beers isn’t even close yet to its heyday before Prohibition.
“You hear conversations about there being a saturation of the market,” Brunow said. “That’s when we point out that it is quite underdeveloped.”
Of the estimated 10 million cases of beer consumed in Richmond and the surrounding counties each year — including restaurant and retail store sales — only about 2 percent is locally made, craft beer, Brunow said.
And Virginia doesn’t rank among the top half of states when it comes to breweries per capita.
As of 2011, the state was 31st, with one brewery per 190,501 residents, according to the Brewers Association. Since those rankings, Virginia has added some new breweries.
The top state for breweries per capita is Vermont, which had one brewery per 26,073 residents, followed by Oregon, Montana, Colorado and Maine .
“We have upwards of 50 breweries in the commonwealth now,” said Mike Killelea, head brewer at Center of the Universe Brewing in Hanover and chairman of the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild.
“We’ve almost doubled, and that is quite a big change in the last four or five years.”
Virginia’s wine industry is still much bigger, as it has experienced rapid growth in the past decade. The state now boasts about 230 wineries and is ranked fifth in the nation for wine grape production.
Even despite theincreasing popularity, “there is room for continued growth” among local breweries, Brunow said.
Brown Distributing is promoting local, craft beers as part of its marketing campaign called “Taste the Local,” which seeks to capitalize on the “buy local” trend in shopping.
Craft beers are typically more expensive than mass-market brands, and some people may find them intimidating or even snooty, but Brunow says the “local” label helps overcome those barriers.
“I think when you talk about local brands, it becomes a little bit more appealing, especially to folks who have not tried it yet,” he said.
Local, craft brew promoters also point to the industry as a job creator, as breweries hire not only brewing staff, but servers and sales reps.
There also is the potential for accessory business, particularly if the craft beer scene helps to develop the local tourism market.
The Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau is working on ways to promote Richmond’s craft breweries to tourists this year, said Erin Bagnell, the bureau’s spokeswoman.
She said the growth in craft breweries fits well with promotions of the region’s outdoor activities and its culinary scene.
“Those three things are all popping on all cylinders now,” she said. “They will all be part of our general promotions this year.”
Also, the Virginia Tourism Corp. is promoting the state’s craft breweries, along with wineries, on its website, and it promotes August as Virginia Craft Beer Month.
Richmond resident Tommy Miller has already jumped into that market by starting Richmond Brewery Tours.
Miller, a 35-year-old Chesterfield County native with a graduate degree from VCU, has bought a 14-seater bus and wants to sign up tourists and local residents to take tours of local breweries and do beer tastings.
“Our craft brew scene is just now starting to take off,” Miller said. “I hope this brewery tours business will be another exciting element to add to the region.”
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