Breweries
Birds Fly South Ale Project to close October 10th
Greenville, South Carolina’s Birds Fly South has announced they will close on October 10th, 2023.
Shawn and Lindsay Johnson started Birds Fly South Ale Project 7 years ago in the Hampton Station area of Greenville, South Carolina. The couple met and married while Shawn was in the Coast Guard in Clearwater, Florida. Shortly after getting married, the opportunity came for the Johnsons to move to either Hawaii or Alaska and they chose Alaska. As you can imagine, the weather in America’s 49th state isn’t as conducive to outdoor activities as Florida, so they took up brewing beer. Indoors.
A few years later, the family transferred back to Florida, and that’s where Shawn & Lindsay’s brewing career really took off. From the first time Beer Street Journal met Shawn, he always spoke so highly of his brewing mentor, Bob Sylvester, founder of St. Somewhere Brewing in Tampa, Florida.
Before Greenville, there was a stop in Washington D.C., putting in time assisting in the opening of Fair Winds Brewing Company, then getting transferred to South Carolina.
Last night, Shawn and Lindsay announced on Instagram the brewery would close after their final jazz event on October 10th.
We wish that this was a fairy tale ending, but recognize all good things must come to an end. Timing is everything, and we embarked on an expansion to increase our taproom sales that have taken a hit over the last year. We don’t regret that decision, only the way we went about it.
The silver lining is that we are able to step away from the stress of running a business to have more time to focus on our family. This is our opportunity to embark on a new adventure and enjoy a new pace of life.Birds Fly South via Instagram
On a personal note, Shawn and Lindsay, as well as the entire brewery crew and fans they call “The Flock” are some of the kindest, outgoing, family-focused breweries I’ve ever been to. Their wild ale Skin & Bone is still one of the best of its kind In the southeast. It’s heartbreaking to hear this brewery won’t be there on the next trip to Greenville.
Below are some pics from Beer Street Journal’s first visit to Birds Fly South, featuring Shawn, Lindsay, and family back in August of 2016.
Wild Heaven Crab Fest brought a little bit of Maryland to Atlanta
Wild Heaven held their first Maryland-style Crab Fest in late July.
Have you ever befriended someone because of a body of water? In my case, it’s the Chesapeake Bay. Let me explain.
I grew up in Delaware. For those of you who are terrible with geography, Delaware is a state. It is actually the first state to ratify the Constitution. They’re pretty proud of that. Sarah Young, the VP, and co-owner of Wild Heaven Brewery in Atlanta, grew up in Maryland. (7th to ratify.) We’ve always talked about growing up in the mid-Atlantic over beers, which actually prompted us to make a Chesapeake Bay-themed beer (aka Old Bae), a saison with Old Bay seasoning. Folks loved it, McCormicks told us to stop. Oh well.
With that over, Sarah wasn’t ready to pack up the seasoning just yet, as it were. Sarah loves beer and crabs and Long John Silver’s drive-through wasn’t going to cut it. We were talking full-on “Bay-Style” crab boil. She brought Maryland to Atlanta in the purest form she could and did it up right.
Young sourced over 800 fresh Maryland Blue Crabs from Harbour House Crabs, which were overnighted to Wild Heaven’s Garden Room at their West End location. Tables were lined up end to end, covered in brown paper, and stacked eye level with Old Bay, crab seasonings, and wood hammers for a cracking good time. Live music started when the first crab hit the table and didn’t stop until the last one was shredded. Beers were cold and plentiful. There was enough low country boil to serve half of Maryland. By the end of it all, couples were dancing along with the band.
All Young wanted was a true-to-life Maryland crabfest in Atlanta and she freaking killed it. ATL’s finest crab-eating pros lined up before noon and when the doors opened, did what came naturally. Hopefully, this will become an annual event for the brewery.
Check out the day below 🦀
New Realm’s big summer move? Booze.
New Realm’s distilling arm ramped up big this summer, launching spirits in both on and off-premise retail.
So let’s get real about New Realm Savannah. The location brought New Realm Vodka and a line of RTDs into the world that to this day are still doing quite well. And yet, despite high hopes for the city covered in Spanish moss, there were a plethora of factors that constantly worked against it. New Realm had to take an “L” on Savannah but the spirits program wasn’t done.
New Realm Brewing appeared out of seemingly nowhere in 2018 with the largest opening brewing capacity in Georgia’s history (around 20,000 barrels). They blew through that capacity in just months, and not long after, the brewery found itself with a second location in Virginia Beach. After making such an aggressive mark on the beer world, naturally, the spirits world was next. That’s where Savannah, Georgia, came to be.
Back to Atlanta.
Inside New Realm’s Atlanta brewery was a small barrel room used mostly for barrel-aged beers. It morphed in a little event space for private parties or the occasional beer dinner. That’s where New Realm resurrected the spirits program, putting in a whole new distillery, after selling the Savannah still and buying a new hybrid still. Kevin Ford, Master Distiller, with a previous history at Buffalo Distillery heads up the program, and just like New Realm’s beer program, lightning is striking again.
Here in summer 2023, a craft distilling program that once seemed ancillary to New Realm’s vision is front and center. Anything subtle about New Realm Distilling can be considered a thing of the past, with Ford running the show. He’s a pretty humble and down to earth distiller who has basically cannonballed into the deep end of the booze pool in Atlanta and beyond.
“We really didn’t want to do this the way it’s been done before.”
If you want to source bourbon for your own program, most of it will come come from one of three different distilleries. To Ford, that would be basically checking boxes. “Same juice, different bottle. That didn’t sit well with me,” he says. So while New Realm’s 100% in-house bourbon ages, New Realm did something a little different – sourcing bourbon from small, younger Texas and Kentucky distillers and blending it at home. The result is a bourbon blend with hints of toasted walnut and brown sugar that hit the market initially in April 2022. New Realm’s 100% in-house bourbon is aging as you read this.
Vodka. Gin. Rum. Agave.
Vodka is fairly easy and quick to make, which is why almost every burgeoning spirits program starts with it. Incidentally, New Realm Vodka sells extremely well at the Atlanta location. Rum, Gin and Tequila are a little more complicated if you want to do it right. Craft beer brewing is a constant exploration, so why can’t distilling be as well?
The goal is to be a little different. That meant not buying liquid and relabeling it. “That’s back to checking boxes,” Ford says. Kevin started with a standout legacy Jamaican rum producer, then distilling Savannah-made molasses and blending.
Producing tequila proved to be more complicated however, since the spirit is protected. If you want to call it tequila, it has to be made in Jalisco, Mexico. In the U.S. it’s fairly common for a small distiller to buy bulk agave syrup and ferment it. “It’s just not good that way, so we pushed in a different direction,” Ford says. “We were going to do this the hard way by growing our own, but in the end we found a Mexican based producer that grows Blue Webber agave and roasts and extracts it for us,” he adds. New Realm distills it in Atlanta, creating a spirit as close to authentic tequila as possible.
Introducing the “Cask Series”
Spirits are a lot like beer. You need that limited release that piques interest. In this instance, it’s less of a customer hook and more of a playground for Ford that will constantly change. This newly minted series uses specially sourced barrels like Oloroso Sherry and Madeira to create uniquely finished bourbons.
Only half of the volume from these barrels has been bottled (in honor of the brewery’s 5th birthday). They have then been refilled with the flagship bourbon and racked away again for a while. This solera method guarantees this specialty series will constantly change.
Selling Faster Than We Can Sustain
“Vodka is our number one seller in Atlanta, and bourbon at Virginia Beach, and it’s all selling faster than we can currently sustain,” Ford says. It would seem after the last two years of drinking to survive, folks want to spend their money on good liquid. New Realm is distilling at both Atlanta and Virginia Beach but is currently on the hunt for a full-scale production facility in the southeast. “It’s crazy to work at a place where the sky’s the limit,” Ford adds. “New Realm is happier making things the hard way as long as it’s good.”
This summer might be the “summer of spirits” for New Realm, having now expanded their vodka and bourbon and other spirits offerings beyond the brewery/distillery walls. It was something the New Realm had always planned to do when the time was right.
Recently, we asked New Realm co-founder Carey Falcone about the spirits distribution expansion. “It all happened a little in reverse,” he says. The demand was there before we went big with it, where I thought we would launch and build demand.”
Time works in your favor sometimes. It certainly does for whiskey.
Wild Heaven Fest Beer, Year 6
Wild Heaven Fest Beer returns for a 6th time (if our drinking memory serves us well) this weekend.
A few years ago, brewery co-founder Eric Johnson debuted Autumn Defense, a creative rendition of the popular fall lager. In that case, [Defense] was actually ale, with “pronounced bright citrus flavors, brewed heavy-handedly with Munich malt.” A festbier in spirit, but as Johnson admits – not very traditional. “You’re not a brewer if you’re not experimenting I guess,” Johnson once told us. “It doesn’t always work out.”
Wild Heaven Fest Beer follows a much more traditional path since its inception. Fest Beer now is true marzen lager, officially leaving the idea of an “ale festbier” behind for good. To get here, tweaks to the recipe (and yeast) had to happen.
Johnson used Gungeist hops in years 1 and 2 of this release – a European hop of Hallertauer parentage. These hops did make a good lager, but ultimately traditional brewing just wins out. (Another revelation that happened, later, the Gungeist hop flavor wasn’t the same 4 weeks later.)
These days, the lager is brewed completely with classic Noble hops from Germany.
The path from Autumn Defense to Fest Beer was a journey unto itself. What fest beer is today is quickly becoming a fall tradition for Wild Heaven and their fans.
Wild Heaven Fest Beer is available on draft and 12-ounce cans seasonally starting this week.
Style: Festbier/Marzen
Availability: 12oz Cans, Draft.
Debut: 9/22/18
Latest Return: August 2023
5% ABV
Image: Beer Street Journal
A look at Creature Comforts Athens Pre-Build
Anheuser-Busch sells off 8 brands to Tilray
It seems like only yesterday that the beer industry would spend their days and weeks wondering who Anheuser-Busch would buy next. It all started when A-B bought Goose Island back in 2011. Fast forward to today, Bud Light is no longer the #1 selling beer in America, and Anheuser-Busch is selling off breweries they once acquired to a cannabis company.
Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, 10 Barrel Brewery, Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Company, Blue Point Brewery, and Hi Ball Energy have been sold to Tilray Brands Inc. in an all-cash deal that will close by the end of 2023.
Tilray also owns Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewery, Alpine Beer Company, Montauk Brewing Company, and Green Flash Brewing.
By Tilray’s estimates, this acquisition will put them as the 5th largest craft brewing company in the United States, upfront 9th. Combined, the craft brewing portfolio is worth $300 million.
According to Andy Thomas, the president of Bud’s “The High End,” the brewery’s segment of craft breweries they have purchased (Goose Island, Wicked Weed Brewing) stated in a press release that Tilray approached Bud earlier this year about acquiring these brands – which would pre-date Budweiser’s massive multi-billion dollar crash this summer after a failed marketing move with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Ty Gilmore, the president of U.S. Beer at Tilray states this transaction will push their beer production from 4 million case equivalents to 12 million.
Tilray is headquartered in New York City, with operations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America, with an annual revenue of $628 million dollars in 2022.
NoFo Brew Co opens Gainesville location
NoFo Brew Co opens their new facility in Gainesville, Georgia August 2nd a year after the location was officially announced.
The brewery purchased the building in June of 2022, located on the corner of High Street and the Midland Greenway near the heart of downtown Gainesville. The 18,746 brewery is situated near a pond and a dog park, and boasts a 3,308 square foot patio. NoFo also has a walkup window for beers to-go for walking around the open container district of the city.
NoFo Gainesville also has two private event spaces for parties and celebrations.
“After a year of construction, we are beyond excited to see NoFo Brew Co open here in Gainesville. We look forward to serving each and every guest that walks through our door. I also want to give a very special thanks to the City of Gainesville. They have been so welcoming and an absolute joy to work with throughout this process. Cheers!
– Joe Garcia, CEO & Co-Founder
This third location comes shortly after the brewery acquired Tantrum Brewing in North Georgia, turning it into their 2nd facility and production facility.
NoFo Gainesville is located at 434 High Street SW, Gainesville, Georgia, open 6 days a week, closed on Mondays.
Image: NoFo Brew Co.