Without water, there’s no beer.
That’s put Asheville-area breweries trying to recover from Tropical Storm Helene in a difficult position.
Many local breweries gave away much of the clean water they had to the community in the early days of the recovery. With only estimates of when potable water will return, brewers are considering unique ways to brew again.
But with sales of whatever beer they had in stock likely to be drastically reduced by the lack of tourism, they’re also running into challenges selling that beer.
Beer’s main ingredient, water, unavailable to Asheville breweries after Helene
Water, of course, is necessary to brew beer. It’s also a marketable ingredient; think of how Coors brands its beer as “made with Rocky Mountain water.” The water in Asheville, in normal times, is well-regarded and one reason why big breweries like Sierra Nevada and Oskar Blues set up shop here.
The water available to brewers in the Asheville area now, though, can’t be made potable for brewing purposes even with a filtration system typical of a brewery.
“We do use city water, but we have a pretty good-size filtration system,” said Tom Miceli, owner of Whistle Hop Brewing in Fairview. “The water that’s coming through the pipes now would not pass through our filters.”
Other breweries have tried to bring in outside filtration systems to no avail.
“Our brewmaster is sanitizing the water the best he can and leaving it above boiling so we can just go back and easily get a few gallons and then go back to the kitchen,” said Pike of the operations at The Bier Garden.
“We had a group in here with a filter the other day,” said Ed Ransdell, co-owner of Terra Nova Beer Co. in the South Slope neighborhood of Asheville. “They can filter creek water and river water and make it clear, but the water coming from the reservoir, the particulates are small and they couldn’t filter them all out — even with this high-tech, hardcore filter they had in here for 24 hours.
“It didn’t do what they thought it would do. So I don’t know how long it’s going to take. We don’t even know from the city.”
Indeed, ask brewers — or anyone really — around the area and they’ve heard a wide range of estimates or flat-out guesses: everything from a few weeks to a few years. Ray Pike, kitchen manager at The Bier Garden downtown, is hopeful that potable water will return in two to 10 weeks.
“Two weeks ago, they were saying 10 weeks until we got water back at all in some capacity, so they’re working diligently,” he said.
After tropical storm, brewers had water and gave it away to people in need
Though some brewers are beginning now to think about how they’ll source water in the future, that certainly wasn’t a concern in the early aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene.
“Brewing right now is nonexistent,” Pike said. “We used the clean water we had here, and we bottled it up during the hurricane and gave it to staff and people who needed it.”
Many breweries have hot and cold tanks of filtered water already filled as part of their regular brewing operations. But in the days following Helene’s impact, many brewery operators drained them to serve the needs of their communities. Terra Nova, for instance, drained much of its 1,200-gallon tanks to distribute to community members as part of their work as a hub for World Central Kitchen.
At Whistle Hop, Miceli gave away food-grade, empty honey buckets (the brewery also makes mead) to fill with water from their tanks and other clean water sources.
“Obviously brewing operations are closed, but we were lucky to have that water to be able to help folks out for a little bit,” Miceli said. “We also brought a bunch of buckets down to Fairview Elementary School and, down there, they had water distribution site set up, thankfully.
“They had tanker trucks, but they didn’t have vessels for people to put the water in. We were lucky enough to help out. I know it’s not a big thing but it’s something we could do.”
While brewing is of course off the table for most breweries at the moment, many of these spots also prepare food. That’s required some innovative thinking.
At the Wedge Brewing taproom in the Grove Arcade downtown, Jay Monaghan has noticed the proliferation of water totes and parked tanker trunks outside hospitality businesses.
“There are a lot of breweries and hotels that are using different out-of-the-box thinking,” he said. “People are evolving, so well figure it out one way or the other.”
What about the Western North Carolina beer that was already brewed?
At The Bier Garden, “everything we had that was available to keg or bottle was and is sitting in the rear keg,” Pike said.
Indeed, many breweries were gearing up for the typically booming leaf season, so plenty of beer is on hand at some breweries.
“Everyone has product because we were revving up for the busiest time of the year; we just don’t have any means to sell it,” said Steven Brett, general manager at Terra Nova. “But we kept power, which allowed us to keep our product.”
That is, Terra Nova beer was kept cool, so it stayed fresh. Again, though, what to do with that beer is another issue and one that could have financial implications for a while.
“This is a major curveball and what worries me is the slow-motion train wreck with the loss of revenue for so many people,” Ransdell said. “We’re trying to sell our beer wholesale off the mountain to towns that can buy it because a lot of the local buyers aren’t open or their really hunkering down, so it’s like every little direction you look it dries up your revenue stream.”
Over at Whistle Hop, Miceli said he lost a few beers that were in the lagering process when Helene hit, but that there was enough beer canned and kegged to manage any demand that swells in the next few months.
Some smaller-capacity breweries have an opposite problem, though: less beer and more demand.
Diatribe Brewing in West Asheville opened only a few days after Helene came through town. They hadn’t gotten electricity back yet, but people still wanted to come and hang out.
“It was one of those things where friends were here hanging out, people were in the neighborhood, people were popping their heads in and it became apparent pretty quick people wanted to get out and have a drink,” said Diatribe owner and head brewer Dave Myer. “We kind of did it and weren’t sure if we were going to keep going or not, but the amount of people that night that were so happy and excited, it was like, ‘OK, I guess we’ve got to keep going.’
“We were still debating it the next day and people started coming in, so it was like, ‘I guess were open.’”
Myer said though they’ll “be good a little bit longer,” Diatribe’s beer supply is “dwindling,” and it has started exploring brewing elsewhere with neighbor brewery Cellarest Beer Project in order to have beers ready in a few weeks time.
“We just did a couple collabs in different cities last week so we can get our beer in the queue by just going elsewhere to get our beers brewing,” Myer said.
Myer also sourced cans from a brewer friend in Charlotte — the demand, he says, required it.
“It was clear people wanted to have some beer to take home,” he said. “If you’re not drinking the water, beer’s always a good thing to drink.”
Asheville breweries striving to serve as community hubs through Helene recovery
There’s a recognition that having a brewing still standing isn’t something to take for granted. That is, the problem of how they’re going to navigate water restrictions — and not, say, how to rebuild an entire brewery — is a good problem to have.
That said, Wedge lost its main Foundy Street location and Terra Nova had the community around its Swannanoa taproom devastated by Helene. Miceli lives minutes from the Craigtown community that was destroyed and knows the brewers at nearby Chimney Rock Brewing Co., which was wiped out.
As such, they’re hoping to use their breweries to help the community. Terra Nova will indefinitely donate a dollar of every beer sold toward various businesses in Swannanoa.
“We want everybody to come back because we need it,” Ransdell said. “When there’s a lot of businesses doing well, we all do well.”
Diatribe is donating money to charities and bringing in out-of-work bartenders so they can earn a little money — many service industry folks here work multiple jobs and losing even one can put them in financial hardship.
“Usually, my partner, Betty, and I work the majority of shifts to cover the bills, but we wanted to just make sure we’re helping out people who are out of work,” Byer said. “We told them all, ‘We can’t do anything long-term, but I know you’re out of work right now and can at least do this until you’re back on your feet.’”
Indeed, just providing a place to work is beneficial. Miceli isn’t taking a paycheck but has brought back bartenders to help them make ends meet.
“We’re trying to figure out how to balance shifts for them. It’s good to be able to get them going again,” Miceli said.
Too, Miceli’s putting others above his own financial situation. Whistle Hop had sent a large shipment of beer (about $2,000 worth) to a wholesale client just before the storm and when that business got wiped out, he decided he wouldn’t cash the check for it.
“We’re writing it off,” Miceli said. “I think more than one of our kegs is floating in the Gulf of Mexico right now.”
Ultimately, breweries can only do so much to navigate water restrictions, brew beer again and sell enough of it to keep Asheville’s vibrant brewing scene alive until things return to normal. Ransdell said until then, he’s encouraging folks to just support as many local breweries, and businesses, as possible.
“There’s a lot of need around here for sure,” Ransdell said. “Anyone that’s open, just visit the business and buy stuff because everyone needs money to keep chugging. It’s the most basic thing, but you take it for granted until there’s not anybody here.”
Matt Cortina is a food writer with the USA Today Network. Reach him at mcortina@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Tropical Storm Helene recovery: Asheville breweries cope with no water
