Parkersburg Brewing stays on course

August 23, 2023

Throughout its roughly seven-year history, Parkersburg Brewing has been one of West Virginia’s most traditional, stay-the-course ale brewers — one seemingly less swayed than many of its brethren by contemporary, heavily-hyped beer trends.

Parkersburg Brewing (PBC) blazes its own trail, does things its own way.

Blazing their own trail

An interesting case in point is that one of its consistently top-selling beers is an American Brown Ale, a style that is very unusual to find at the top of the leader board at other American brewers.

Unusual today too is that PBC currently produces only one hazy IPA—and this one just seasonally. Also rare in this line-extension crazed age: Parkersburg Brewing only introduced five new beers in the past three years. Two in 2021, none in 2022, and two so far this year.

You could call these points a testament to the owners’ love and commitment to a more traditional and carefully constructed beer-style mix as their business model.

Experiment but know your limits

It’s not that PBC hasn’t experimented in the trendy side of beer chemistry. You need look no father than its foray into making alcoholic seltzers, as evidence that its owners are, at times, temped to throw tradition to the wind. But recently, we’ve learned that their seltzer experiment has pretty much run its course and is being deemphasized by the brewery. (Seltzer will no longer be canned and will only be available in kegs.)

Kölsch catching on

Still, in today’s IPA and quick-sour feeding frenzy world, it’s extremely rare to find a brewer that leads with a Brown Ale and a Kölsch. This Kölsch is Parkersburg Brewing’s newest flagship, having only been introduced in June and quickly ascending to the top-selling position.

Brewery founder and co-owner, Dan Curtis, tells us that the reason they are committed to a condensed book of beer styles is rooted in the difficulty small brewers face in mastering, perfecting, and maintaining different beer recipes for commercial production. He makes a great point.

Focus helps bring quality, consistency

It’s nearly impossible for any small brewery to excel in making 20 or 30 different beer styles. In fact, a fiction and a serious weakness in today’s style-jumbled craft beer market is a brewery thinking it can put a never-ending rotation of beer-styles through its tanks and taps and do them all justice. This lack of beer style focus often brings mediocre results to all the beers.

Parkersburg Brewing fights this temptation to be all things to all people by focusing on what it can do best. That’s not a bad decision.

A small brewer with no specialty is most often a producer of beers with no special quality. It’s very rare to find a small brewer who can produce a wide range of beers with equal aplomb and superior quality. It’s the old Jack of all trades; master of none conundrum.

In the real world, beer style focus is usually a good thing.

These guys can brew

Oh, we know these Parkersburg Brewing guys are capable of brewing at a very high level. They’re the only West Virginia brewery to ever bring home a gold medal from one the the country’s top beer competitions. That was a 2018 World Beer Cup gold medal for its flagship Cell Block 304 American Brown Ale.

While it’s true that beer style focus is important, a brewer can’t just ignore today’s fast evolving beer market and expect find long-term success. Sometimes, a brewery’s hesitance to offer new beers does slow it down.

Demand for lighter craft beers grow

In the past few years, as basic pale lagers have ascended to the top selling positions at more and more small craft breweries, PBC’s beer board was blank in that category. They rarely did lagers and didn’t have a basic lager-clone golden ale either.

To get into the game, PBC needed to come up with a light and tasty ale-based answer (one with a Germanic heritage). It took them a little while, but earlier this summer they introduced their answer to the popular easy-drinking beer style trend: Confluence Kölsch.

Confluence Kölsch quickly found an audience with West Virginia’s craft beer fans. This summer, it is PBC’s top seller.

It’s an easy drinking golden beer that you’ll find light, crisp, clean, and quaffable. It has some pleasant grainy notes and a subtle touch of winey character, along with good clarity, that are so desirable in a Kölsch.

At 4.4% ABV, it’s the perfect summer heat beater, and one which will probably surprise PBC with continued strong demand into the cooler months. (The experience of macro-breweries demonstrates that Light beer lovers don’t stop drinking them just because it’s cold outside.)

Other PBC beers to seek out

Another winner at the brewery is their seasonal Luponic Rhapsody New England IPA (7.3% ABV). They’ve tweaked this beer over time, and they now have a medium-bodied and nicely balanced beauty on their hands. It’s a smooth drinking, full-hazy, fruit-forward, low bitterness brew. It’s everything people look for in the style.

*Dan Curtis happily pours a Luponic Rhapsody Hazy IPA*.

Their flagship IPAs, Citrus Tsunami and POW Daze Double IPA remain solid and on the menu year-round. Other staples include Blonde on Blonde (a coffee flavored blonde ale) and Hip Hef Hefeweizen (a traditional, German-style wheat beer).

Cell Block 304 always satisfies with its chocolaty front end blending nicely with complex toasted grain flavors and a hint of orange blossom honey. If you lean toward richly malty beer, with some spicy phenol character, the give Two’s Company Belgian Dubbel a try. It’s their second new release of 2023 available at the taproom.

An additional notch on PBC’s beer pistol comes from brewing one of the state’s few, true low-ABV (under 3%), Berliner Weisse style beers. Named Bushwa, they serve it at the taproom either straight or mixed with a shot of fruit syrup—just like they do in Berlin.

They got a sweet canning line

One thing that really helps PBC move ahead is their canning system from Twin Monkeys Canning Systems of Aurora, Colorado.

It includes a depalletizer, twist rinser, three-head filler, and automatic can label wrapping on the line. It will run at 20 cans per minute.

After rinsing the inside of the empty can with fresh water, the system purges the air in the cans with carbon dioxide, then immediately fills them fully with beer. As the beer is still foaming over the can, the system puts a layer of nitrogen on top of the liquid just before a lid is sealed on the can. This technology ensures that as little beer-spoiling oxygen as possible is in the can when it is sealed.

Next, a label is applied to the can, and and the canning process is complete.

PBC’s Dan Curtis (at left) and John Cox stand by the history wall.

History on the wall

When visiting Parkersburg Brewing, one can’t help but get the feeling that at least part of its brewing ethic is rooted in the owners’ reverence to their city’s brewing history. The original Parkersburg Brewing Company was a business started in the late 1800s and operating until state Prohibition took hold in the early 1900s.

Inside the taproom, a history exhibit on the wall clearly illustrates this reverence. You’ll find an original wooded case full of old beer bottles hanging overhead and a display case full of really cool brewery objects. Spend a few minutes taking in the historical brewery documents and other memorabilia. It’s nice to see that these guys take their brewing heritage seriously.

[Read more about Parkersburg’s old-time brewing history at this Mackey Antiques website. Includes some incredibly interesting photos.]

PBC on WV Beer Roads podcast

Dan Curtis and John Cox provide extensive background on PBC’s experience and direction in this latest West Virginia Beer Roads podcast episode. Listen in to hear much more about their brewing philosophy and thoughts on the future. Recorded in August 2023.

WV Beer Roads • Parkersburg Brewing • 41 minutes

Visiting Parkersburg Brewing

PBC’s brewpub in downtown Parkersburg is open daily, except Sunday and Monday. On Fridays and Saturdays, it opens early for lunch at 11:00 A.M. Up-to-date food and beer menus are posted on the business website. (On our recent visit, Erin McCoy and I found our dinners delicious.) Brewery tours are available by appointment.