WV brewery late summer roundup

There are so many things happening around West Virginia’s breweries— too many to highlight everything, But here’s a late summer roundup of some brewery news we heard at the recent Mountaineer Brewfest in Wheeling.

Wheeling Brewing Company

Tasting through the current selections at Wheeling Brewing Company, you can tell that Jimmy Schulte, co-founder/brewer at Wheeling Brewing Company, has been busy advancing his brewing craft. And we love his interest in locally-sourced ingredients. He’s recently been busy preparing new items using fresh local hops from Knucklehead Hop Farm in Leetonia, Ohio. One is a hopped-up Cascade Knucklehead Pale Ale and the other is an IPA with a blend of Knucklehead’s Canadian Red Bines, Centennial, and CTZ hops. You’ll want to look for these.

The brewery’s kitchen has certainly come into its own with lots of farm-to-table fare. They work with The Blended Homestead, an Ohio County meat and vegetable farm, and up to 20 other local product vendors to supply the brewpub. This is the kind of positive impact that our local breweries can provide. Not only good local beer, but good local food, too.

Coming up in September, Schulte says to look for his Oktoberfest lager, which is made in the traditional festbier manner. And, Schulte was happy to take home 2nd Place in the Mountaineer Brewfest’s beer competition for his Nail City Porter.

Brew Keepers

Kevin Ayres has been extra busy at Brew Keepers since he began the process of opening a new location across from Wheeling’s Centre Market.  First, he will move the production facility, followed by the establishment of a new taproom operation. The location is right next door to Wheeling Brewing Company, making their section of Main Street a true brewery district.

Ayres says he will initially begin brewing there on his current equipment.

“We’ve only been running about half capacity,” he says, adding that he wants to max that out before investing in a new brewhouse. He will, however, add a few new fermentors and on-demand hot water tanks that will allow him to significantly increase his beer making capacity.

For the taproom’s food service, they’ll follow a model so popular today in urban breweries; they will build partnerships with local restaurants and food vendors who don’t serve beer to provide food for them.

He’d like to get the production piece of the move operating in mid-fall with the taproom open by the Holidays. While he’s been tied up with preparing for the move, he’s still found time to brew up some new specialties.

“We just brought out our Tmavy Czech Dark Lager,” he said. This was a beer that he competed twice with and won awards as a homebrewer. Try it if you get a chance.

Mountain State Brewing Company

Mountain State Brewing Company in Thomas is a year into the restart of its seasonal beer program. Thomas brewpub bar manager Heather Carr invites everyone to stop in and see her at the brewpub to try some of the new specialties. Seasonals now on tap include Otter Creek American Lager, Rumsey Rock Porter, and Devil’s Gulch American Pale Ale. Coming later this fall, look for the return of seasonals John Brown Ale with its hints of chestnuts, and Closs’ Harvest Roasted Pumpkin Ale, and more.

Weathered Ground Brewery

“We’re really excited about this year’s batch of Oktoberfest,” says Sam Fonda of Weathered Ground Brewery in Cool Ridge. “It’s in the same flavor profile as last year, a good ol’ festbier, but we’re super excited about this year’s batch because we used about 97 percent local malt from Riverbend Malt House. We did not do that last year.”

Called A.J.’s Festbier, expect the Oktoberfest to hit the taps on September 29 at the brewery’s Oktoberfest celebration.

At the taproom now look for their new Patersbier Belgian Table Beer and then another new IPA coming out soon  A new batch of Goodness Gracious Double IPA should tap in the next weeks.

Fonda says he entered four beers in the Great American Beer Festival competition, which will take place in September. He says he’ll be going out to GABF with some folks from Short Story Brewing Company.

Chestnut Brew Works

Chestnut Brew Works might be beginning to break out of the Halleck headlock that has held the brewery hostage for the past few years. The intense popularity of wonder-beer Halleck Pale Ale has made it tough for the brewery to produce all the variety of new beer that owner Bill Rittenour wants it to.

But it appears as if some of this summer’s special batches are starting to change sales patterns a bit at Morgantown’s top craft beer accounts. Rittenour says they “turned a lot of people on” to both their Mountain Laurel IPL and the Dank Williams, Sr. NEIPA that they brewed this summer.

“People were saying, ‘Oh wow, these are really good too,'” he said. “Our Halleck sales kinda dropped because those picked up. That was good to see; we don’t want to be a one hit wonder.”

Coming out soon will be a Dank Williams, Jr., made in the same vein as Sr., but with a slightly different hop and malt bill. Also look for a new Amber and a Hoppy Blonde.

Maybe the most impressive new beer we tried at the Mountaineer Brewfest was Chestnut’s Brockway Brut IPA. The brew was bone dry, hoppy, and so well-balanced as is the trademark of everything the brewery releases. We love Halleck, but we need Rittenour and his brewing crew to continue loosing their creativity on the world. Otherwise, we’ll never know what beauties we missed.

Brewstel

Tim Powell, of Brewstel in Elkins, recently brewed a Bickle’s Knob Brown Ale, in which he used actual water from a spring at the base of the mountain in Randolph County.

“We’ve been IPA crazy,” says Powell when asked what he’s been brewing the most of. He keeps a remarkable 13 or 14 of his own brews on tap at his Elkins brewpub, which he call the smallest brewery in West Virginia.

Big Timber Brewing

Sam Mauzy said, believe it or not, progress is being made on getting production started at Big Timber Brewing Company‘s new production brewery location in Elkins. We’ll hopefully see an announcement in the next month or so.

Once production is underway at the new location, expect to see Big Timber’s Logger Lager added to cans, giving them three full-time canned beer varieties.

New beers of the season include their annual Forest Fest Ale, which is just being released now. Mauzy said their local hop supplier had crop problems this summer which greatly limited hop yield. That means we’ll see a quite limited supply of Big Timber’s Wet Hop beer this year, and they actually had to cancel production of their Hop Harvest Ale. That’s a shame because that beer was so good last year.

Mauzy and crew will be headed off to Denver to pour Big Timber beer at the Great American Beer Festival this September. They last poured beer there in 2015.

Best of luck to all the West Virginia breweries that entered beers in this year’s Great American Beer Festival competition. We’d love to see a medal winner to follow up on Parkersburg Brewing’s victory with it’s Cellblock 304 American Brown Ale at the World Beer Cup last spring. No WV brewery has ever won a medal at GABF.