It’s bottoms up for breweries

By Stephen Lintner  

AUGUST 23, 2010 7:15 a.m. (0)

What gets Tom Davis and the other craft beer brewers in South Carolina out of bed in the morning isn’t a pot of coffee. It isn’t the shrill throbbing of the alarm clock, pulsing in sync with the red line digits. Or even the country breakfast swimming in sausage gravy that gives the region its national flavor.

It’s the thought that after they punch the clock in the morning, the rack of pint glasses hanging gingerly and anxiously on the wall past the 5,000-gallon tanks of the brew house won’t have to be empty for the rest of the day.

Davis, founder and owner of Thomas Creek Brewery in Greenville, started the brewery back in 1998 and has been soaked up to the knees in the “hoppy” beverage ever since.

For a crash course in brewing, the four components of every beer are barley, hops, yeast and water. After malting the barley, the brewer cracks the grain and mashes the barley, turning it into a sweetened liquid.

The resulting product, now called wort, is boiled to extract the flavor of the hops being added and to concentrate the liquid then cooled and allowed to ferment. After aging, the brew is ready for bottling or kegging.

The detailed brewing process is much more involved and dishes out a beating on the body. Constant heating and cooling to minute temperature adjustments are required and attention must be focused on the tiniest details. But what it drains in physical labor, it gives back in the crisp reward of that first taste.

“Most days I don’t sit down,” he says. “It’s just a passion. And it has to be. It’s too hard of work otherwise. It’s not something you can just pick up and put back down. You have to finish what you started.”

For brewers like Davis, however, craft beer in South Carolina has been stifled by the restrictions and red tape surrounding alcohol sale and consumption.

But in June, South Carolina legislation finished what the South Carolina Brewers Association started three years ago.

Up until June 1, breweries in South Carolina were limited by laws that prohibited the sale of alcohol to individuals and tastings through the consumption of alcohol on the brewery grounds.

“If someone wants to visit the brewery it’s kind of ridiculous to not be able to taste what they make,” says Davis.

Tastings are the brewers’ chance to interact with their customers, teach people about the brewing process and familiarize the general public’s taste buds with the range of concoctions they offer in-house, some of which they have yet to release.

It’s window-shopping the way it was meant to be.

On June 7, Gov. Mark Sanford signed bill H. 4572, one of the SCBA’s many proposals for change, which allowed for, among other stipulations, beer tastings and alcohol sale on the premises.

Breweries may now offer four different 4-oz. samplings of beer and sell up to 288 oz. (or one case) in a 24-hour period for consumption off the location.

Davis’ hope for the future is to ride the momentum forward and expand the bill to include keg sales, a controversy laden with all the ingredients for a strong porter.

“It’s already started to change,” says Davis. “We are going to make it be known that we are selling to the public directly, but word of mouth is spreading it pretty well.”

Thomas Creek Brewery runs tours and tastings from 12 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday at their location 2054 Piedmont Hwy. It’s best to call in advance for a tasting.

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