Weathered Ground Brewery shines at 9

*Sam and Aryn Fonda relax for a moment at Weathered Ground Brewery’s 9th Anniversary Celebration*

“Our anniversary party is my favorite day because it’s the day that the people who walk through the doors are those people who have walked though the doors for the past nine years. We get to see everyone who has supported us through the years.”

Those words, spoken enthusiastically last Saturday by Aryn Fonda, co-founder of Weathered Ground Brewery (WGB), give a big hint as to where she thinks the credit goes for the brewery’s success. It’s all about the people—both a high quality brewery staff and a bunch of loyal customers—that make an outstanding brewery happen. In Cool Ridge, West Virginia, you’ll find both.

“The taproom has become such a community gathering place.” Aryn explains.

Brewery co-founder Sam Fonda adds, “We love living here and operating here. It’s been a great nine years.”

If you’ve been to Cool Ridge, you know well that it’s a tiny rural community in the high Appalachian mountains of southern West Virginia. Weathered Ground Brewery sits on a 60 acre tract of high meadow and hayfields. Tall pines and spruce outline the fields and the brewery’s rustic wooden exterior perfectly blends into the picturesque landscape.

Nine years and counting

Sam and Aryn Fonda have accomplished so much over the past decade (nine years of which they’ve been open for business). They’ve led and directed a team that carved a top quality brewery out of a field of dreams. It’s truly one of those if you build it, they will come kind of experiences. Weathered Ground Brewery is a destination.

“We live on a beautiful property, and we’re trying to take full advantage of this place we’ve got,” Sam says. Beyond the beer he notes with a smile that their brick oven pizza and chicken wings are also very popular.

However, their success with the brewery is not just about attracting a local fan base. It’s also their success in attracting travelers to and through the area. That began with the owner’s connections to the Charlotte area, where both Sam and Aryn worked before building the brewery. In the early days of the brewery, their North Carolina friends helped spread the word about the place. These days, though, those out of area visitors are much more about the big growth in tourism right in their part of the state.

“It’s so much fun having all the usual faces come in every week, as well as all the travelers coming to the New River Gorge [National Park] and to the Winterplace ski area,” Sam explains. The brewery’s location just three miles off the I-77 Ghent Exit helps a lot.

Sam and Aryn are both modest people when it comes to taking credit. Neither shows a big ego when talking about the brewery’s success. But both are so deserving of credit for leading a new business operation from its start-up to today’s widely accepted position as among the best, most enjoyable breweries to visit in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Sharing the credit

Aryn feels they’ve been so very fortunate over the past nine year to have built a staff that they truly trust to keep things going at a high level. “Our staff is incredible in taking care of the day-to-day work,” she says. “It’s taken a lot of the work load off [Sam and me].”

Aryn believes a large part of the credit for their business quality comes from staff consistency. “We have four bartenders who have been here since day one,” she cites as an example of that consistency. “Our staff is what keeps us floating.” [Meet the WGB Staff here]

Sam agrees. “We’re super fortunate with having low turnover here, having people who want to stay here. They certainly represent us well.”

*At WGB, you’ve probably seen Joy and Mandy and Ashley (not pictured), three of the OG bartenders who add so much enjoyment to a brewery visit.*

Sam, who oversees all the brewing operations, also loads credit on the brewery staff—Anthony, Travis, and Terry—for the brewery’s success.

In the brewhouse, Anthony Meador is the guy who brews most of the beer. He’s been working at WGB since day one. While Sam still oversees the beer production operations, (“I still keep my hands in many things down there,” he reminds me.) these days, he only leads the occasional brewing session.

Honestly, I wonder if Anthony’s appearance at Weathered Ground was not divine intervention.

While WGB was still in the planning stages, local resident Anthony showed up in Fonda’s life to tell Sam he would like to learn more about brewing. Sam took him under his wing and began training him in the real brewer’s art. Once the brewery was built, Anthony started working as an assistant brewer, gaining confidence and experience with every batch. Today, nine years later, Anthony has blossomed into one of our state’s most outstanding craft beer makers.

Weathered Ground Brewery five 9th anniversary beers — *Five beers for the 9th Anniversary Celebration*

The Anniversary brews

The five special brews Anthony made for the anniversary weekend were all outstanding examples of their styles. No flaws, nothing average about them, just pure taste enjoyment. Those beers showcased the brewer’s maturity and his disciplined commitment to the details of his time honored trade.

The Anniversary Peach is based on their standard Blonde Ale, just with a load of peaches added. It captures a powerful fresh peach aroma and flavor—and that is hard to accomplish in a beer. The Anniversary Nut Brown is a classic English style brown ale. So smooth and delicious, focusing on the luscious nutty, toasted malt. Anniversary Pale Ale is a joyful ode to Strata and Cashmere hops. A funky fruit basket jumps out of the glass of this moderate-ABV, late-hopped beauty. Anniversary Oud Bruin takes the classic Belgian sour style to new West Virginia heights. It absolutely nails a perfect balance among the acidity, malt and barrel-aged flavors you desire in this viscous, mouth-coating beer style. The Anniversary Lemon Shandy presents a powerfully refreshing, fresh lemon taste profile that goes down easy with it high carbonation.

“Much of what I brewed for the anniversary was summer themed. Just trying to beat the heat,” says Anthony in his typical understated manner. But don’t let his modesty fool you; this man can brew.

*The 9th Anniversary beer boards at Weathered Ground*

Any day you walk into the WGB taproom, you’ll find 20 beers on draft—about half of those might be one-offs and rotating seasonals. Much of the extra beer variety comes from the small batch system, where Anthony can be more experimental and simply brew a beer with ingredients that have caught his attention.

Keeping all those beers on the menu board delicious and consistent, that’s a challenge, but one that Anthony has learned to enjoy.

“I always love brewing something new,” he says. But he explains it’s gotten harder and harder to find time to do that, given the growing popularity of their core brands. Making life even busier is the fact that, this summer, the brewery expanded its taproom operation from five days to seven days a week.

Ingredients are still key

Since the early days, Sam has maintained a commitment to focus on regionally-sourced brewing malts and other ingredients for his beer. He primarily shop malts from Carolina and Riverbend—both North Carolina malt houses. He wants to ensure that WGB beers are extra fresh, flavorful ,and well-integrated into the regional economy. He blends those local grains with specialty malts from high quality international malt houses, such as Germany’s Weyermann.

For the best hops, he uses his connection with Alexa Long, the Fayetteville WV-based Hollingberry & Sons sales representative. Alexa works to get Sam whatever hops he wants from America’s and the world’s best hop farms.

WGB is also one of the largest users of West Virginia fruits, herbs and local farm products in its beers.

Looking ahead

Since the brewery is running pretty much at full-capacity, making more beer is not currently one of WGB’s goals. Instead, Sam says what he and Aryn want to do is make incremental improvements to various aspects of their operation.

“We’re hyper focused on the taproom right now,” Sam explains. “We just did a huge renovation in the taproom kitchen, which is going to help us with the food side.” (I also saw a slew of brand new picnic table in the taproom’s outdoor lawn area.) Sam also says that Aryn and he want to get their faces out to more craft beer festivals and events around the state. They want to get more involved with others in supporting the local craft brewery industry.

The brewery’s current goals are also involved with Aryn’s recent career move. Until just a few weeks ago, Aryn was working outside the brewery in the legal profession. Now she and Sam are both devoting full-time to the brewery, along with raising their three daughters. They’re tremendously busy people, ones who wouldn’t have it any other way.

You can catch Sam and Aryn this Saturday at Mountaineer Brewfest in Wheeling. They’ll be staffing the WGB tent, which will be located in the WV brewers row overlooking the beautiful Ohio River.

Weathered Ground Brewery
2027 Flat Top Rd,
Ghent, WV 25843

WGB Website