How Heist Brewery went from an after thought in the city’s craft beer scene to producing the best beer in town
Just before 7 A.M.. on a Saturday in late February, Spencer Farrell jumps on top of a chair in front of 100 or so people outside Heist Brewery. Some of them have been here since the place closed at 2 A.M.. A firepit still burns on the patio.
Everyone is here for the release of Heist’s Cataclysm III, a Russian imperial stout brewed with Ugandan and Madagascan vanilla beans and aged in Whistle Pig Rye and Jefferson Rye bourbon barrels. It’s one of the most highly anticipated beers in some time for Charlotte’s exploding craft scene.
Farrell, the general manager at Heist, rings a bell to get everyone’s attention, surveys the crowd, and says, “OK, first off, this is ridiculous.”
Camping overnight for a beer release is nothing new in the craft beer world. But here, such a scene is validation for a brewery that just a few years ago barely registered a blip in the Charlotte craft beer community.
When Kurt Hogan opened Heist Brewery in the growing NoDa neighborhood in 2012, the goal was to use the brew house as a research and development facility. There, the brewers Hogan hired could experiment with different styles in small batches. Those that didn’t work would be cast aside and those that did would go into Heist’s rotation. The idea was to compile the brewery’s best beers, so that when it opened a production facility one day, it could hit the market strong.
Early reviews of Heist were positive—but more for a strong cocktail program and unique dishes such as pork belly corn dogs and duck flatbread.
The brewpub’s beer was a different story. The styles lacked character and were mediocre at best, especially considering what other breweries in town were producing. One Yelp reviewer called it “downright awful … not just passable bad, like undrinkable bad.” Hopes of starting a production facility and going to market quickly faded.
This story is from the July 2017 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
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This story is from the July 2017 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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