Where do you go to get a great craft beer? A local brewery? A local beer store? Do you make your own? Amazingly enough, you can find the resources to do all three right here in Fuquay-Varina!
In what is quickly being recognized as Asheville-like in nature, the southern Wake County area has enjoyed an influx of quality craft beer and beer-related businesses over the last few years. With four breweries in Fuquay-Varina alone, two more in Holly Springs and one in Angier, the opening of a beer-making supply shop and a bottle shop in recent years have really put Fuquay-Varina on the craft brewery map.
It was a novelty in 2008 when Aviator Brewing Company first starting brewing kegs of beer in an airplane hangar. Until then, the only craft brewery had been Carolina Brewing Company (CBC) in Holly Springs. Although CBC had a healthy following that enjoyed its brewery tours every Saturday, Aviator Brewing Company came to town and took it by storm. With a unique brand and an energetic owner who knew how to use social media to his advantage, Aviator rented the Varina Station in downtown Fuquay-Varina to create a taproom, moved its operations to Technology Drive, and never looked back.
In 2014, the brewery on Technology Drive added 11,000 square feet onto their existing building to allow for more equipment and a much nicer bar and tasting center. This almost doubled their space and gave Mark and his crew of 12 much more room to grow their operations. With a canning system and an expanding distribution channel, Aviator is now in bars and tap rooms in several states, making them a regional brewing company. With six staple beers and several seasonal varieties every year, Aviator enjoys a wide reputation and a huge following. Brewery tours are offered from Thursday through Sunday, and patrons can enjoy the bar at the brewery as well as the Tap Room and Smokehouse.
The Tap Room helped pull people into downtown in the evenings and on weekends by offering live music and good craft beer. The move allowed Aviator to expand its base of regulars, and soon the demand for product outstripped the ability of the little airplane hangar to keep up. In 2010, Aviator Brewing Company moved its beer-making operations to a new facility with plenty of room for expansion. Not long after, owner Mark Doble acquired the restaurant space across the street from the Tap Room and opened the Aviator Smokehouse. Instantly, he had a pub and a restaurant within a stone’s throw from each other. “People who like good beer generally also like good food,” Doble smiles. “Plus it keeps people drinking longer.”
Both the Tap Room and the Smokehouse are decorated with tons of aircraft and flying memorabilia, and offer a cozy respite from the stress of the work week. The Tap House has a large, handcrafted bar that runs down one side, with a large back deck, a wide porch down the front of the building, and a patio out front that offer lots of extra seating. The front patio is a popular gathering place after work, where people bump into neighbors and friends as the downtown traffic winds its way through Varina between the Tap Room and the restaurant. Live music at the Tap Room on the weekends turns downtown Varina into a bustling hub of social activity, and in good weather the place is jumping with people out having a good time.
The popularity of an active pub and restaurant in the downtown Varina district attracted a short list of other beer makers who were looking for a viable location for their breweries. The first to arrive was Draft Line Brewing Company and brewers Scott Palmieri and Scott Wood. After looking for almost a year, they settled on a warehouse location in the same downtown district as the Aviator Tap House and Smokehouse. A brewpub, DraftLine makes and serves its beer in the same location, with food trucks and live music during peak hours. This great new brewery already has a crowd of regulars who make it their home after work and on the weekends. “It’s a great, cheap hobby,” says co-owner Scott Palmieri. “Folks can enjoy themselves and not spend a fortune.”
Draft Line offers cornhole and ping pong inside their facility, and a loft area with a wide screen TV that is popular with the younger set. The wide oak bar that stretches across the front of the seating area offers a great view of all the brewing equipment. On Tuesdays, the brewery offers a “One-Up” batch, using their smaller pilot system. This smaller batch processor only brews 1.5 barrels at a time, and they use it to try out new recipes and techniques. This has attracted a regular crowd of beer enthusiasts, and depending on the popularity of each week’s sample, it can last from a few days to a week. “We have a lot of loyal regulars who enjoy the One-Ups and the camaraderie at the brewery,” says Palmieri. “But we see a lot of new faces every week, which is very exciting!”
Palmieri and Wood are enthusiastic about the growing beer industry in southern Wake County. “There are more breweries in Fuquay-Varina than in Apex and Cary combined,” Palmieri explains. “Obviously we have something very special here in Fuquay.” Draft Line offers brewery tours every other Saturday for free, and encourages residents to come in and experience how beer is made. With six regular offerings, and two seasonal brews under their belt, the Scotts are preparing for their third seasonal (Maibock) and just signed on with a fairly large regional distributor.
One of the by-products of an active brewing community is the increased interest in home-based production. Home brewing is where many of these new breweries got their start. When Adam Drew and Christine Miles opened Homesteaders Brew Supply in June of 2013, they made it significantly easier for home brewing enthusiasts to get their supplies. Until then, hobbyists had to drive to North Raleigh to stock up on ingredients and tools, but with a local outlet in Fuquay-Varina, the subculture of garage brewers in our area has found an ally. Homesteaders offers classes in beer-making on a regular basis, and hosts a brew club in their store that meets once or twice a month. They also offer cheese-, coffee-, and wine-making supplies and books. “We’ve been open for almost two years,” Drew says. “And we are really enjoying watching it grow month after month. We see new people all the time, plus have our regular crowd of regulars who bring samples in to share and even hold competitions here to try out their skills.”
Drew and Miles have seen the interest in craft beers and beer-making increase considerably in the two years they have been open. “It feels like we’re becoming a small Asheville,” Drew shares. “It’s a close-knit community that is very welcoming to new hobbyists, and with seven or eight breweries within a 10-mile radius, we’re definitely seeing a mini phenomenon here in southern Wake County.”
Not all beer enthusiasts make their own beer, however. Another part of the fast-growing craft beer explosion in Fuquay-Varina is the arrival of the new Aviator Beer Store—another piece of the Aviator stable of offerings—right across the street from the Tap Room. Open less than a year, the beer store has almost doubled its inventory since Christmas and really provides craft beer drinkers with a large variety of options to choose from. In addition to rack upon rack of different craft beers and a small selection of regional wines, it also offers a cocktail bar in the back with scotch, whisky and bourbon. Of course there are plenty of Aviator t-shirts, growlers, glassware, and wall art, but the beauty of the shop is the multitude of different beers from different breweries—some even from overseas. The collection also includes hard ciders and 10 different varieties of gluten-free beer. Many of the beers are available in singles so you can mix and match a sample four or six-pack to take home and try.
Fuquay-Varina to create a taproom, moved its operations to Technology Drive, and never looked back.
In 2014, the brewery on Technology Drive added 11,000 square feet onto their existing building to allow for more equipment and a much nicer bar and tasting center. This almost doubled their space and gave Mark and his crew of 12 much more room to grow their operations. With a canning system and an expanding distribution channel, Aviator is now in bars and tap rooms in several states, making them a regional brewing company. With six staple beers and several seasonal varieties every year, Aviator enjoys a wide reputation and a huge following. Brewery tours are offered from Thursday through Sunday, and patrons can enjoy the bar at the brewery as well as the Tap Room and Smokehouse.
The Tap Room helped pull people into downtown in the evenings and on weekends by offering live music and good craft beer. The move allowed Aviator to expand its base of regulars, and soon the demand for product outstripped the ability of the little airplane hangar to keep up. In 2010, Aviator Brewing Company moved its beer-making operations to a new facility with plenty of room for expansion. Not long after, owner Mark Doble acquired the restaurant space across the street from the Tap Room and opened the Aviator Smokehouse. Instantly, he had a pub and a restaurant within a stone’s throw from each other. “People who like good beer generally also like good food,” Doble smiles. “Plus it keeps people drinking longer.”
Both the Tap Room and the Smokehouse are decorated with tons of aircraft and flying memorabilia, and offer a cozy respite from the stress of the work week. The Tap House has a large, handcrafted bar that runs down one side, with a large back deck, a wide porch down the front of the building, and a patio out front that offer lots of extra seating. The front patio is a popular gathering place after work, where people bump into neighbors and friends as the downtown traffic winds its way through Varina between the Tap Room and the restaurant. Live music at the Tap Room on the weekends turns downtown Varina into a bustling hub of social activity, and in good weather the place is jumping with people out having a good time.
The popularity of an active pub and restaurant in the downtown Varina district attracted a short list of other beer makers who were looking for a viable location for their breweries. The first to arrive was Draft Line Brewing Company and brewers Scott Palmieri and Scott Wood. After looking for almost a year, they settled on a warehouse location in the same downtown district as the Aviator Tap House and Smokehouse. A brewpub, DraftLine makes and serves its beer in the same location, with food trucks and live music during peak hours. This great new brewery already has a crowd of regulars who make it their home after work and on the weekends. “It’s a great, cheap hobby,” says co-owner Scott Palmieri. “Folks can enjoy themselves and not spend a fortune.”
Draft Line offers cornhole and ping pong inside their facility, and a loft area with a wide screen TV that is popular with the younger set. The wide oak bar that stretches across the front of the seating area offers a great view of all the brewing equipment. On Tuesdays, the brewery offers a “One-Up” batch, using their smaller pilot system. This smaller batch processor only brews 1.5 barrels at a time, and they use it to try out new recipes and techniques. This has attracted a regular crowd of beer enthusiasts, and depending on the popularity of each week’s sample, it can last from a few days to a week. “We have a lot of loyal regulars who enjoy the One-Ups and the camaraderie at the brewery,” says Palmieri. “But we see a lot of new faces every week, which is very exciting!”
Palmieri and Wood are enthusiastic about the growing beer industry in southern Wake County. “There are more breweries in Fuquay-Varina than in Apex and Cary combined,” Palmieri explains. “Obviously we have something very special here in Fuquay.” Draft Line offers brewery tours every other Saturday for free, and encourages residents to come in and experience how beer is made. With six regular offerings, and two seasonal brews under their belt, the Scotts are preparing for their third seasonal (Maibock) and just signed on with a fairly large regional distributor.
One of the by-products of an active brewing community is the increased interest in home-based production. Home brewing is where many of these new breweries got their start. When Adam Drew and Christine Miles opened Homesteaders Brew Supply in June of 2013, they made it significantly easier for home brewing enthusiasts to get their supplies. Until then, hobbyists had to drive to North Raleigh to stock up on ingredients and tools, but with a local outlet in Fuquay-Varina, the subculture of garage brewers in our area has found an ally. Homesteaders offers classes in beer-making on a regular basis, and hosts a brew club in their store that meets once or twice a month. They also offer cheese-, coffee-, and wine-making supplies and books. “We’ve been open for almost two years,” Drew says. “And we are really enjoying watching it grow month after month. We see new people all the time, plus have our regular crowd of regulars who bring samples in to share and even hold competitions here to try out their skills.”
Drew and Miles have seen the interest in craft beers and beer-making increase considerably in the two years they have been open. “It feels like we’re becoming a small Asheville,” Drew
The rise in popularity of craft beer in our area is further evident with the addition of two new breweries that are opening up in 2015. Lincoln Brewery, established by Richard Camos of Camos Brothers Pizza, went at it backwards. Already owners of two bottle shops and two tap rooms in Raleigh, Camos are now opening a brewery that will provide beer for their other locations. The facility is located on Hwy 401 behind their newest Camos Brothers Pizza location and is slated to open during the first week in April. The brewery will have a tasting room, a beer garden, an arcade and 24 taps. “I am a beer and food snob,” says Camos. “I hate going to a brewery and getting stuck drinking beer I don’t like. Our system will have 3-4 of our beers and 20 others so if customers come in and don’t like what we offer, they have other choices.” Customers will be able to order great Camos Brothers pizza to go with that beer.
Fainting Goat Brewing Company is a brand new nanobrewery that plans to open its doors at 330 S. Main Street in June. Brewers Tim Reichert and Tim Potwora are members of Homesteaders Brew Supply’s brew club and were inspired to open their brewery from the other brewers they’ve met through the club. Their third co-owner, MaryAnne Durborrow is the business manager and brains of their operation. Their choice to open the brewery in Fuquay-Varina was based on geography—all three owners live in or near town—but they chose the Fuquay downtown district so they would complement, not compete, with Draft Line and Aviator. “Craft brewers traditionally help each other out,” says Reichert. “We hope to share beer with our fellow brewers to help us all gain brand recognition.”
A nanobrewery is a brewery that makes small batches of beer. Reichert and Potwora have constructed most of their own equipment to save money and enjoy the process of building a business together. They will only be producing one or two barrels of beer with each batch. Unlike Draft Line and Aviator, which are located in industrial zones, Fainting Goat will be in a commercial zone and thus will have restrictions on how much space they can dedicate to production. “We have to reserve 70% of our space for customer interaction—seating, serving, entertaining—which only leaves 30% available for production,” Reichert explains. “Therefore our focus will be on serving what we make in-house and only distributing what doesn’t impact our supply.”
With four breweries, a craft beer store, and a beer-making supply shop within a 2-mile radius, Fuquay-Varina is very definitely on the cusp of one of the newest trends in North Carolina. Nanobreweries, microbreweries, and general craft breweries are popping up from Asheville to Wilmington. With White Rabbit Brewing Company in Angier and Bombshell Beer Company and Carolina Brewing Company in Holly Springs, southern Wake County has quickly become a hot spot for craft beer enthusiasts.
