Greenbrier Valley Brewing shows off expansion

Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company (GVBC) of Maxwelton, West Virginia unveiled a major expansion that more than doubles its production capacity. The new equipment is also designed to improve efficiencies and the quality and consistency of the beer. Management showed off their shiny new look and bold business plan recently at an open house event.

Some of the more significant parts of the expansion were the addition of:
• five 90-barrel fermentors
• one 90-barrel bright tank
• a 30-can-per-minute automated canning line w/ depalletizer
• a new 1,600 sq. ft. cold room w/ 20 ft. ceiling
• a centrifuge
• a new, much larger hot liquor tank
• a new, larger capacity glycol chiller
• upgraded laboratory equipment
• 1,300 new kegs
• a 3.5 barrel pilot/small-batch brewing system
• much larger CO2 tank capacity
• a new draft system & more taps in the brewpub.

Meet the brewing team

Probably the most impressive part of the brewery’s expansion, however, is in staffing. Brian Reymiller returns to the brewery following a couple-year absence, during which he brewed for Devils Backbone Brewing Co. in Lexington, Virginia. As GVBC’s original brewer, Reymiller is known for creating Devil Anse IPA, as well as other major beers in GVBC’s stable. While at Devils Backbone, he gained further valuable experience brewing the nationally respected lagers and ales there, as well as with working in a larger-scale production facility.

“I had a great experience there learning what it takes to run an 80,000 barrel a year brewery,” Brian said about Devils Backbone.

At GVBC, Reymiller now serves as director of brewing operations. In this capacity he will develop and oversee the brewery’s entire production program. He is blessed with a competent brewing staff to carry out his plans. Dave Barron manages the daytime brewing, and J.W. Groseclose manages the nightshift.

While still pretty new to brewing, Barron seems to have a knack for the discipline and will surely further develop his art under the tutelage of Reymiller. Going on the full-time payroll the same day as Reymiller, night shift brewer Groseclose comes to GVBC with a solid professional brewing background. He was a founding member and original brewer at Painted Peak Brewing in Tazewell, Virginia, and before that had apprenticed at Three Notch Brewing in Charlottesville.

Another assistant, Travis Canterbury, handles most of the cold side operation, such as tank transfers and dry hopping and also takes the lead in equipment cleaning and getting the beer ready for packaging. Brewery operations manager Gary Vermillion did an excellent job overseeing the installation of the new brewing equipment and upgrading much of the existing equipment. It looks great.

Changes underway

Things are definitely changing at GVBC. Reymiller has already made significant changes to GVBCs brewing ingredients and processes. He got a new supplier for their base malt, changing to a higher quality, more expensive malt that should result in improved beer. He is also reassessing and updating the brewery’s flagship beers and seasonals. Working with hops suppliers, he hopes to bring in more hop varieties that will find their way into the beer. Another big priority project is improving the consistency of the finished product to ensure that all the production benchmarks are hit on every batch. To help measure all this, he is putting together a much upgraded laboratory.

In what we’d call a very smart move, brewery owner Bill Heckel has given Reymiller the green light to take charge of the brewing side of the business. In his original stint at GVBC, he was the head brewer but had to take direction from the owners on what beer he was to brew and, often, the ingredients he had to use. That arrangement sometimes led to less than optimal results. Now, things are different.

Being director of brewing operations does not mean Reymiller will dictate all brewing policy or be the only one to develop the beer recipes. That’s not his style. He is much more collaborative. In fact, he says he has already approved scaling up some brews that Barron and Groseclose developed on the pilot system.

What’s brewing at GVBC

Not only will the expansion allow the brewery to catch up with current demand for things like the popular Devil Anse IPA, but it will also allow them to add new beers to the regular lineup. It’s exciting to see some lagers in the brewery’s plans. West Virginia is still very much a lager state, and we need West Virginia breweries to produce more of them.

From his time at Devils Backbone and from his earlier days working at Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania, Reymiller knows lager well. “Probably brewing at Victory is the first place I got hooked on lager beers,” he says. (As you probably know, Victory produces the highly revered Prima Pils.) “I really liked the Danzig Baltic Porter that we brewed at Devils Backbone. And I have a new appreciation for the pale lagers brewed there, like the Gold Leaf Lager, which is an amazing beer.”

Not surprisingly, GVBC had 30 barrels of Pilsner cooking last week, which they followed up with a second 30 barrel Pilsner batch. Right on the heels of that will be two batches of a new black lager. In addition to their popular American-style ales, you should expect to see a variety of German-style lagers coming out of the brewhouse over the next year.

Reymiller says their new Pilsner is a German-style one, with all German malts and German hops. The Pilsner will initially be distributed in draft only, but later could be canned if market response to the new beer is good.

Aggressive production goals after expansion

Since his arrival in early August, Reymiller has overseen a production explosion at the brewery.  “We did more beer here last month than has ever been done before,” he said, “but it’s only about half of what I want to see. Next August, I want to be at 1,000 barrels of beer a month.”

It is so exciting to hear talk around the brewery expressing such enthusiasm for the future. And they have some super ambitious goals for the next five years. Big numbers are being thrown around. Seriously, they have a lot to prove before anyone can really see if they have a shot to hit those marks, but it’s so great to see a West Virginia brewery with a real plan to grow big. We need more of this.

Brewing all that beer requires much more storage space, and GVBC’s new cold room appears to be up to the task. Brewery operations manager Gary Vermillion calculates that the cold room will have a capacity of 1,500 barrels of packaged product once the double stack shelving is installed. All GVBC beer will be kept chilled prior to trucking it out to distributors.

The new cold room is also allowing the brewery to expand the taps in its taproom from 6 to 16, and all are powered by a brand new draft system. The former draft system is being retained and will be dedicated to dispensing a group of house-made non-alcoholic sodas developed by assistant operations manager Alex Durand. Among the sodas that will soon debut at GVBC are a Blood Orange Cream Soda, a Maple Cream Soda (flavored with local maple syrup), a Root Beer (flavored with lots of natural herbs and spices supplied by Edith’s Health Store in Lewisburg), and a sugar-free option, in development. Sixteen beer taps and four sodas will certainly make visiting the taproom a much more enjoyable experience for beer fans and their families.

The brewery’s new canning line is pretty awesome, and so fast. It also has a new dot matrix printer that puts a clear “Born On” date on each can.

Steering the ship

There certainly are a lot of moving parts to a brewery, and General Manager Sam Walker-Matthews is charged with seeing that all those parts work together, keeping them in line with the overall vision for the business. One component that Sam will focus much of his attention on is distribution. For a brewery with GVBC’s business model and goals, maintaining a well-oiled distribution network is critical.

“We’re working with our current distributors on a reality based expectation of what we can get for them,” Sam said. “We’re going to be going to all of our distributors talking about what we can do to help them with their sales. We’re going to have a direct interface with the distributors on a more frequent basis.”

Speaking of a vision for the business, brewery owner Bill Heckel definitely has it. He put on the open house event primarily to introduce his employees to the local community. He wanted to give them a day where they get some praise for all the hard work they have completed.

“They’ve done the work,” Heckel said. “I helped organize it, but I didn’t do the work they put in.” When asked what he’s looking forward to now that the buildout phase is complete, he answered, “A lot of production.”

He said as soon as they get West Virginia distribution satisfied, they are going to be in Virginia on a more consistent basis.

Talking with him, you can’t mistake Heckel’s sentiments about his staff. “I’m very, very happy,” he said. “We have a wonderful crew. It goes from our brewers down to the rest of the staff. Everybody’s willing to pitch in to help anybody else. They jump in wherever they’re needed.”

West Virginia beer industry observer Chuck Johnson, who also serves as the brewery’s legal counsel, sees things headed in the right direction. “I’ve followed Greenbrier Valley since the day they opened. Now, they’ve more than doubled their capacity. They can provide the beer that people want in this state. There was a big demand that wasn’t being filled, but now that’s going to be met. It’s going to be great for the community. Great for the industry. Great for tourism.”

Visiting this brewery and talking with the staff, you sense a new enthusiasm and a strong momentum. They make you believers. They make you believe that Greenbrier Valley can break though to the next level. There’s a lot of work to be done — a lot of beer to be made and sold — but they are off and running.

---

Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company

Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company is located in the Airport Industrial Park at Maxwelton, just a few miles north of Lewisburg, WV. While the brewery sports a basic taproom, it is primarily a production brewery which relies on distribution to sell its products. It is best known for its West Virginia legends series of canned beer that feature the Mothman, Devil Anse Hatfield, and Sasquatch (Wild Trail Ale). GVBC also has some of the best social media of any WV brewery, making it easy to keep up with what’s going on. Follow them on Facebook or Instagram.