Richmond: Lots brewing in the very same neighbourhood
BY NOW, even casual beer fans should know that Richmond’s scene is booming. Stone, the pioneering Southern California craft brewer, opened a gargantuan brewery and gorgeous tasting room in the Virginia capital’s east end this year.
Five-year- old Hardywood Craft Brewery has gotten so popular, it’s opening a plant in nearby Goochland that will produce nearly three times as much beer as the original brewery. Mekong figures in national “best beer bar” polls by the likes of USA Today, Thrillist and more.
And these days, when I want a taste of Richmond - cutting- edge craft beers, Virginia ciders, even mead and whiskey - I head to Scott’s Addition, a neighborhood in the north-west part of the city that I couldn’t have picked out on the map three years ago.
The industrial area, north of the city’s Museum District and just to the west of the Redskins’ Bon Secours training camp and the Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball stadium, has become home to an array of producers, including the Veil Brewing Co., whose juicy IPAs have become some of the most sought- after on the East Coast; Ardent Craft Ales, which creates flavourful seasonal saisons and just won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival for its Brett Saison; and Blue Bee Cider, an award-winning maker that just moved to the neighborhood.
In all, four breweries, two cideries, a meadery and a distillery are within a few blocks of one another, with another brewery planning to open in early 2017.
“If you park your car and walk between all eight of us, it could take you a full day,” says Blue Bee founder Courtney Mailey. “A very fun full day, I might add.”
The tasting rooms in Scott’s Addition share what Mailey calls “a strong sense of independence,” but they’ve also developed an interesting symbiotic relationship. “Our business is bumping up every time someone opens,” says Ardent co-founder Tom Sullivan. “With the Veil, you can literally look down the street and see people walking up the street (to our taproom) from their direction.”
The Veil co-founder Dustin Durrance says it’s not a one-way street: Ardent’s anniversary party in June “was one of our biggest days,” he said, fuelled by out- of-towners who came for the second annual event.
And for Blue Bee’s Oct 15 grand opening, the cidermakers worked with six neighbours, including Black Heath Meadery and Reservoir Distillery, to create a series of seasonal collaborations.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1990s, when Ardent’s Sullivan attended Virginia Commonwealth University, “Scott’s Addition was where all the artists went to find studios and rehearsal spaces where we could make a mess and do our thing relatively quickly,” he says.
“It was that last corner of the city that no one seemed interested in.”
Years later, Sullivan, Paul Karns and Kevin O’Leary began as a home-brewing co- op in Richmond’s historic Church Hill but opened their brewery in Scott’s Addition in 2014 because it was easier to find property with the right zoning.
At first, “it was a bit of a zombie wasteland, to be honest with you,” Sullivan says.