By Nick Haseloff
Asheville natives wonder when the tourism and brewery boom will plateau, but the tourists still show up. People travel to Asheville for beer specifically. Elizabeth Keil, office and marketing manager at Green Man Brewery, said unique breweries only found in Asheville attract tourists to the area.
Brewers at Wicked Weed Brewery in Downtown Asheville discuss future recipes.
Photo by Nick Haseloff
“The tourists really enjoy the quality. I think that the increased number of breweries is great for the scene because it forces a lot of creativity and it also gives a lot of breweries the ability to work together and it creates a really tight-knit community that fosters innovation,” Keil said.
Keil compares this sort of cooperation with the Bohemian period in Paris, brewers helping each other out and pushing each other to create more varieties of creative beers. She said brewers are like artists, competing but supporting. However, she does think there is a limit to the creativity.
“I do think there is some sort of cap in some point in time. There’s only so many you can have,” Keil said. “Beer really does have a definition, so there’s only so much creativity you can go with in that limited definition.”
According to Kendra Penland, executive director of the Asheville Brewers Alliance, beer stands as part of the region’s culture and will stay despite concerns about the industry’s economic sustainability.
“Beer is a part of Asheville because of our history of craft. It is a huge part of our economic development,” Penland said. “We developed a history of craft. For generations, the area has been isolated geographically, as well as politically, and it has led to us figuring things out on our own.”
According to the ABA, 32 breweries open for business every day in Buncombe County alone, with 60 more in the outlying areas of Western North Carolina. With this count, WNC rivals the remainder of the state in the number of breweries.
“We have trouble keeping track sometimes,” Penland said. “Every month, we get one or two new members. We’re up to 87 now.”
Even with the constant growth of the brewing industry, brewers have confidence the trade will continue to increase in the area. Charles Moore, brewer at Wicked Weed Brewery, said he welcomes the expansion.
““Every year, you hear someone say, ‘Oh, we’re saturated. There’s no way we can support any more breweries,’” Moore said. “But then lo and behold, people are opening them up and making money and why not jump on that train?””
“Every year, you hear someone say, ‘Oh, we’re saturated. There’s no way we can support any more breweries,’” Moore said. “But then lo and behold, people are opening them up and making money and why not jump on that train?”
Keil said many smaller breweries struggle when they discover the difficulties of cost analysis. Larger breweries like Green Man are there to help and provide resources to the smaller operations.
“It’s hard to hear some people say, ‘Oh you know, I didn’t buy that beer because it was $15 a four-pack.’ Well, that’s the only way that brewery can keep those lights on,” Keil said. “It’s because you’ve got this three-tier system. You’ve got these expensive ingredients that go into the beer. So, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if in the next two or three years there were a lot of breweries that started closing because they’re trying to hit this bar that larger breweries have been working on for the last 20-22 years. I don’t think that will affect Asheville’s market, but it will affect others.”
Green Man, the second oldest brewery in Asheville according to Keil, got their start with very humble beginnings. Employees of Jack of the Wood started the brand and it quickly took off as their microbrews became more popular she said. Nowadays, it is difficult for breweries to establish themselves in the Asheville market, according to Penland.
“It used to be that you would be able to come in with $30,000 and get started brewing. But now, it’s a lot more difficult,” Penland said. “There’s so much competition and the beer is top notch. In order to be competitive, you have to hit the ground running and produce some really great beer. You don’t have time to experiment.”
Smaller breweries have a hard time competing when they do not have the ability to do so. According to Keil, a lot of the critics of larger breweries with big capital just do not understand how difficult it is to balance cost and experimentation.
“But they also haven’t sat behind a desk and tried to figure out how to find the bottom line of this crazy beer that’s got 400 pounds of coriander and 600 pounds of cherry and trying to find the balance of how to run a business and create all of these crazy innovations and do all these other things, including having a staff of 400 people,” Keil said. ”Without that kind of solid background it’s very very difficult.”
Penland states four things a smaller brewery must master in order to succeed. The brewery must have a solid brand identity, have the capital to make it work, make great beer and connect their brand to the people drinking their beer.
“Every brewery is unique. I really don’t walk into any brewery and think that it is like any of my other members,” Penland said. “Some of them will specialize in particular styles of beers or have a certain aesthetic. But they’re all very different. It’s that marriage of the science and the art that’s so unique. I think that is what drives us to continue to grow as an industry.”
Whatever the future of the beer industry in Asheville, the people inside that industry, such as Moore, Penland and Keil, remain more than confident that it will continue to grow and flourish. With new breweries popping up every month in town, Penland says that we will know soon enough if the Asheville “beer bubble” will ever pop.