High Ground Brewing plans late 2018 opening in Terra Alta

High Ground Brewing will soon be under construction in Terra Alta, WV. Situated in eastern Preston County midway between Kingwood and Oakland, Maryland, it is West Virginia’s fifth new brewery project with a chance to open in 2018.

Dallas J. “DJ” Wolfe is High Ground’s founder, owner and brewer. He says he’s been a craft beer fanatic for at least five years. But it was a few years back, when he took up homebrewing with a friend, that you might say he really caught the bug. 

“I was immediately hooked,” he said. “I spent pretty much every week and hour reading every book, every website, learning everything there was to know about brewing beer.”

He quickly mastered homebrewing and decided he wanted to take a big step up. He wanted to brew commercially.

Wolfe spent 13 years in the U.S. Army and is now serving as a military police captain in the West Virginia Army National Guard. His current day job is chief of security at Camp Dawson, the WV Guard’s training center near Kingwood.

For about the past two years, Wolfe has been working toward a career change. During this time, his brewery business planning has been helped along by the WV Small Business Development Center and veteran’s entrepreneurship program at WVU. Things are moving fast now, as Wolfe recently secured approval for his SBA loan through Huntington Bank. Ground breaking is just ahead. He estimates the total project investment will be about $450,000 by the time he gets open.

The brewery specs

Wolfe owns an existing 2,400 square foot warehouse that he is converting into the brewery. About 800 sq. ft. of that space will be dedicated to his taproom.

Inside his brewery building, Wolfe will install a 10-barrel brewhouse, three 10-barrel fermenters and one 20-barrel fermenter. His brewing system is the same size and brand used so successfully at Short Story Brewing in Rivesville. He will start out kegging his beer, but hopes to add a small-batch canning system later.

When it opens, High Ground Brewery will have a full taproom with pints, flights, growlers, and kegs for sale. He also plans to distribute some beer around the  north central section of the state. Brewery staff will initially come from family and friends, but he expects to hire a couple of people to help in the taproom and probably one beer delivery person to support their self-distribution operation.

For food service, Wolfe will depend on outside help.

“We’ll be bringing in outside vendors to do the food for us,” he said.

He plans to work with barbecue caterers such as Sweet Baby Country BBQ and Russ’ Ribs, both also located in Preston County.

Now the good part: High Ground’s beer

“We’re very good on our IPAs,” Wolfe says. “We’ll do a lot of the New England-style IPAs. We’re really big into stouts too. And we got a great Baltic porter.”

Wolfe says Bill Rittenour of Chestnut Brewing mentored him and has been a tremendous help getting him started down the right path.

“He was awesome to me when I was in my infancy. He spent countless hours training me and teaching me about the business. He let me help him brew on many occasions. He taught me how to brew on the commercial scale.”

We’d say that’s some awesome training because Rittenour brews some of the most consistently good beer you will find in WV. If Wolfe picked up a bit of that magic, he should be just fine.

Wolfe is hoping to have a grand opening before the end of the year. This is a project to keep an eye on.

High Ground Brewing
102 Railroad St.
Terra Alta, WV 26764

Email:  highgroundbrewing@gmail.com