McKay and Huntington beer news

Huntington has some craft beer news worth paying attention to. A mid-winter IPA festival, new retail and, hopefully, a couple of new brewery projects are coming.

Jeff McKay, proprietor of Summit Beer Station, revealed quite a bit of news while recording Episode 007 of West Virginia Beer Roads podcast. McKay reports that this year’s Wild & Wonderful Winter Beer Fest will focus on America’s favorite craft beer style: IPA.

The festival takes place February 15 inside the event space at Back Sheep Harley-Davidson in Huntington. McKay promises 40 or 50 different IPAs on tap.

“Anything hoppy will be well represented there,” McKay says, adding that the beers will come from local, regional, and national breweries. He says he chose IPA as the featured style because of his experience on the retail side at Summit. “Nine out of the top ten beers every month are IPAs. It was a no-brainer for us.”

McKay says their winter niche festivals are geared toward the V.I.P.s at the summer Rails & Ales Festival. He pushes the breweries to bring something different. For instance, High Ground Brewing will bring their Double Dry-Hopped Druid Fluid IPA and also Peaches & Cream Milkshake IPA. Neither of these have been sold before in the southern part of the state. McKay also announced that they should have Rye Whiskey Barrel Aged Torpedo IPA from Sierra Nevada Brewing— another beer new to West Virginia.

Tickets are $50 in advance and only 500 will be sold. Festival ticket link.

New brewery and bar projects confirmed

McKay also confirmed his involvement in a rumored new brewery project for the local region. While he was non-committal on any specific location or time-line being considered, Jeff’s involvement speaks volumes about the type of quality we could expect from the project. Brilliant Stream will have more details on this as the project firms up.

In the building next door to Summit Beer Station, McKay has been saying for a while that he hoped to do something (bar/retail) with the space. He now says officially he will be expanding next door. “It won’t Summit 2.0,” he says. “It will be another concept.”

And in other brewery news, a second brewery project was confirmed by Jay Fox of The Peddler. He said that The Peddler’s owner, Drew Hetzer, has another building in Huntington where they plan to develop a production brewery. They have installed 200 solar panels on the building’s roof, and Fox says they would hope to power the brewery with solar power. Now, that would be a first for the state. The new brewery would be focused on distribution. No other details are yet available.

Hear the complete podcast featuring Jeff McKay here