These days, a visit to Old Spruce Brewing, high up on Snowshoe Mountain, is a visit with brewing excellence.

Since its founding in 2019, Old Spruce Brewing has climbed its own mountain. Its rise to the craft beer stratosphere has little to do with its altitude and a whole lot to do with the talent, commitment, and success of its leadership team: Lawrence Walkup, owner/general manager, and Christopher “Yuri” Eure, head brewer.

Old Spruce Brewing, which celebrated its 7th anniversary in August, is now firmly rooted among the state’s established brewery operations. The brewery’s Untappd overall rating of 3.79 shows the brewery securely positioned among the top echelon of West Virginia craft brewers.

A Winning Strategy

Lawrence Walkup feels that being located next door to the major ski resort and its community has shielded Old Spruce from the slowdown hitting national craft beer. His market is largely a tourist-driven economy, and West Virginia tourism is still on the rise.

Even with the brewery’s advantages, Walkup knows the brewery business can be fraught with pitfalls. Running it successfully takes experience, perception and balance.

“Right now brewers around the country are having to adjust their operations models, but our operation model was probably more resilient because we relied so much more on all the aspects.” He’s talking about Old Spruce’s total restaurant, bar, brewery, and self-distribution strategy.

“I’ve been up here at Snowshoe for 20 years, first as [Snowshoe Mountain Resort’s corporate] food & beverage director, and then I owned a restaurant here for many years. So you develop a business model, and you know what works.”

In order to balance the seasonal business ups and downs on Snowshoe Mountain, Walkup stresses, “You really have to manage your money carefully.”

In the months when skiing is closed, other recreational activities take hold on the mountain, though with fewer participants. Activities such as mountain biking, hiking, summer music festivals, conferences, and fall leaf-peepers all contribute to bringing people to the mountain. This business, along with the brewery’s off-site distribution, mostly to Greenbrier County, keeps beer flowing year-round and helps brewing activities continue through skiing’s off-season.

He’s also fortunate, he says, to have a strong base of business from local homeowners, employees, and other local residents to go along with the tourist trade. That appears to be a winning business strategy.

Canning and distro increase

Walkup credits their investment in a new canning line with helping accelerate both distribution and off-premise beer sales.”Our canning line will do 30 cans per minute,” he says, so it keeps up with what they need.

To take advantage of brewing capacity and increased canning capacity, Walkup began a real push for broader distribution off the mountain earlier this year. The resulting business has been so good that now they really need more cold storage space to hold the bigger canning runs.

“It’s hard for the brewer to keep up with,” he adds.

Looking ahead, Walkup hopes to expand his distribution territory little by little, as long as the brewery can increase its production sufficiently. Production currently is running a little over 50% capacity, head brewer Eure estimates. Walkup is cautious not to add new distribution accounts in the summer and then have to cut them off in the winter because the on-premise sales at Snowshoe are booming.

As sales have grown, so have certain brewhouse procedures. “Today, we don’t do anything unless it’s a double batch,” Walkup says of the 5-barrel brewhouse.

Best moving brews

Old Spruce Platinum Blonde Ale sells best at the brewery’s taps and in their overall market. With sales driven by its easy-drinking demeanor, the Blonde is joined in recent times by Cart Path Kölsch—another quaffable fave. These two sell especially well in the warmer months, but also hold their own throughout the snow season.

To a different customer group, the Old Spruce Raspberry Berliner Weisse has a strong following year round. In the colder seasons, their Porter and Scotch Ale always do well.

However, as an astute taproom manager, Walkup is well aware that not everyone they want to reach is a beer drinker.

“If we’re going to captivate them and keep them a bit longer, we’re going to have to have some food offerings, wines, ciders, and liquor,” he says. To this end, the taproom offers several ciders, NA beers, and wines, along with a full-service bar for whiskey, and cocktails. The food menu features a nice selection of entree specials, starters, salads, handhelds, tacos, and desserts.

At the Old Spruce Brewing, Walkup says the peak season employment hits 15-18 employees, possibly a couple more for events.

Brewing practices

Christopher “Yuri” Eure, Old Spruce head brewer, got into homebrewing around 20 years ago, and he’s been head brewer with Old Spruce for the past seven years. During that time, he’s developed the brewery’s beer offerings in parallel with advancing his own commercial brewing skills. Both appear to have risen well up their respective scales.

He credits TV chef Alton Brown with inspiring him to advance his brewing career. At Old Spruce, he brews on a 5-bbl brewhouse with three 10-bbl and one 20-bbl fermentation tanks. He also runs the kegging and canning operations.

Yuri began at Old Spruce with six original beers: a Blonde Ale; ESB, West Coast IPA, Hazy IPA, Porter, and Pale Ale. Today, he’s up to 10 full-time drafts, with three more taps as seasonal offerings, plus a few others as cans-only.

When asked if he has a preference among his beers, he says, “The Hazy is my baby. I love them. It’s been a labor of love and a process through the years of how to make a Hazy better and better. At the end of the day, that’s what I’ll drink.”

For actual brewing fun, he calls the White Stout Blond Stout, which he brews in the wintertime, his most fun brew because it’s color disguises its flavor.

Among hops, he leans toward those from the Southern hemisphere, but is well-versed in hops from across the globe. He says Galaxy hops are a favorite of his. It was the first juicy, tropical hop that he fell win love with. He’s also hot for the New Zealand Rakau hop with its pineapple-mango signature. He recently received an order of New Zealand Cascade from this supplier and is excited to give them a try. This is a different variety from American Cascade—much more tropical and stone fruit forward, he says.

When asked what keeps him excited about brewing as a career, he says it’s the logistics. “My brain thrives on logistical problems, keeping everything running, keeping everything right. There’s always a problem in the brewery that needs to be fixed. I’m brewing today, so I’ll have a tank free for tomorrow. It’s the logistics I love.”

The past few years, it’s also been great seeing Yuri at Mountaineer Brewfest in Wheeling. Brewfest patrons have also enjoyed the Old Spruce beers he brings.

Beer Names

Inspirations for Old Spruce beer names come from many directions. For example, Log Jamming IPA came from a reference in the film, The Big Lebowski. They named a beer Mountain Guy Ale because one of the mountain guides at Snowshoe loved it.

Their newest beer is Almost Local Ale because it contains mostly all locally-grown Chinook, Cascade, and Centennial hops. Other locally sourced ingredients arena play too, as in their Red IPA, which features locally-sourced hone, and Old Mountain Mocha, which is a beer Yuri brews with locally roasted coffee from Mountain Table, a small-batch roaster in Renick, Greenbrier County.

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Do yourself a favor on your next drive through the West Virginia mountains, and head over to Old Spruce Brewing.

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Contact

Old Spruce Brewing

85 Rescue Road
Snowshoe, WV

Phone: 304-572-0391
Facebook Page

Old Spruce Brewing Merch

Available at the brewery