USA, VA: Twin Creeks Brewing planning to open in Vinton this fall

Vinton will soon be the latest locality in Southwest Virginia to get a taste of the craft beer craze, Roanoke Times reported on April 29.

Three friends are moving their small homebrewing operation into a downtown Vinton storefront that will become the town’s first microbrewery.

When Twin Creeks Brewing opens in the fall, locally brewed craft beer will pour from the taps at 11 South Pollard St., just down the street from the new Vinton Library.

The beer bug bit brothers Andy and Jason Bishop years ago. Together, the members of the Star City Brewers Guild brewed small batches of beer in their homes. Eventually, brewing piqued the interest of their friend and Andy’s colleague, Barry Robertson, when he was helping the brothers rig some shelves for their home brewing operation.

“We had a three-man homebrew club,” Jason Bishop said. All three beer buffs live and work in the Roanoke Valley.

The owners are thrilled at the spread of local craft breweries in Southwest Virginia. Virginia’s Blue Ridge Beerway lists six craft breweries within 30 miles of Roanoke.

Jason Bishop related the local microbrewery trend to Germany and other parts of Europe where nearly every town has its own unique brewery.

“Soon, every town will have its own, local flavor,” he said. Twin Creeks will be the taste of Vinton, he said.

Opening a brewery was a seemingly far-fetched dream for the trio until town employees heard about the brewing outfit located in Andy Bishop’s garage and, in September or October, encouraged the men to open a business in Vinton.

Town officials showed the brewers downtown locations and by the new year, they settled on the Pollard Street location.

“We acted somewhat as a guide to show them what properties we had available,” Vinton Economic Development Director Pete Peters said.

The town also awarded Twin Creeks a $25,000 loan for brewing equipment and exterior and interior renovations. As part of a $700,000 federal grant for downtown improvements, Vinton has $100,000 to award for storefront upgrades. The town has granted three storefront loans and has about $17,000 left to allocate, Peters said.

With a little help from 10 weeks of business classes at The Advancement Foundation and a first-place win at the nonprofit’s “Gauntlet” competition in late April, the beer aficionados are on their way to brewing for public consumption. The win at the Gauntlet competition netted the brewers a check for about $13,000 and a few thousand dollars of marketing services.

This was the second year for “The Gauntlet”, based off the TV show “Shark Tank,” in which budding entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to potential financial backers. At the competition, the Vinton nonprofit awarded about $95,000 in cash and in-kind prizes to 25 entrepreneurs.

The brewers behind Twin Creeks Brewing — named for Vinton’s two creeks, Glade and Tinker —ordered a five-barrel brewing system that will arrive this summer. In the interim, they’re gutting the downtown space they’re leasing.

While the three brewers are “hopheads” and big fans of hoppy IPAs, the brewery will produce a variety of beers, Jason Bishop said. They plan to have about four beers permanently on tap: likely, a blonde ale, a dark stout or porter, and a couple of IPAs.

“We brew a little bit of everything,” he said.

Twin Creeks owners will also use their half-barrel homebrew system to experiment and create smaller batches of more creative beers. The half-barrel system brews about 15 gallons of beer, which equals about 120 pints or enough beers to serve for about a weekend, Jason Bishop said.

For comparison, larger-scale craft brewery Deschutes Brewery will brew 150,000 barrels of beer, or enough to fill about seven Olympic-sized swimming pools, when the company’s Roanoke facility is operational in several years.

Twin Creeks owners plan to open the brewery in September or October.

02 May, 2016