USA, VA: Reason Beer set to open in Charlottesville in June

Three childhood friends have returned to the Charlottesville area to open a brewery.

Reason Beer is set to open in a space in the former Comdial building, close to the Shops at Stonefield, in June, The Daily Progress reported on March 11.

Patrick Adair and cofounders Mark Fulton and Jeff Raileanu met when they were in elementary school at their church’s youth group and have remained friends ever since.

Adair and Raileanu went to Albemarle High School and Fulton went to Charlottesville High School. Fulton and Adair attended the University of Virginia, while Raileanu went to Duke University.

Though the three eventually ended up in different cities, they decided to open their brewery near friends and family in their hometown.

“We really decided we’re going to look all over the country, we’re going to look at different areas of the country, we thought about Northeast, out West,” Adair said.

“There are so many breweries in all those areas, it feels like there’s a lot of breweries in Charlottesville, but when you look at the number of breweries per capita, there are actually fewer breweries than you’d expect for an area this size,” he said. “Especially with the focus on farm-to-table cuisine around here, with the focus on local wine — this is a foodie town, and we all thought that it could support not just one more brewery but many more breweries.”

“This is home for us,” Fulton said. “My parents live here, my wife’s parents live in Richmond, so we had moved up to Maine and did that thing, where we said it was going to be two years and we were there for six years, and we have a daughter now. It made sense.”

“That thing” Fulton did in Maine was to work at Maine Beer Company, where he was the brewhouse manager for about two years and director of brewery operations for about a year before moving back to Virginia.

Fulton became interested in brewing beer in 2005 when he lived for a year with Adair, who had been home brewing on and off since 2003. Fulton, originally an accountant, started home brewing himself, and while his wife was finishing nursing school, the couple realized they could move anywhere.

“I thought maybe I should see what it takes to become a professional brewer because this accounting thing is not really doing it for me,” Fulton said.

He took a course through the American Brewers Guild that ended with a five-week internship at Sebago Brewing Company. Sebago hired him full time and then he had the opportunity to move to Maine Beer and be the second-in-command brewer, he said.

“I worked my way up to head brewer within a few years,” Fulton said. “We built a custom facility and moved the entire brewery out of this kind of garage space and into a nice, brand-new building. That whole experience has been very useful in terms of designing this place and knowing the types of pitfalls.”

He never expected to be running Maine Beer Company, he said.

“A lot of people are like, ‘How can you give that up? It’s crazy,’” he said. “It was tough. It was not an easy decision, but coming back down here ... it was either go back to being a shift brewer, which would be fine, or give this a shot.”

Adair, who has been in Los Angeles designing scenery for TV shows and doing graphic design work, will handle the sales, marketing and design aspects, and Raileanu, who lives in Washington, where he is an economist, will handle the brewery’s finances.

“The three of us have very unique abilities that cover almost every possible thing that we really need to put together a successful project,” Fulton said.

Adair and Fulton found the space at 1180 Seminole Trail after looking around the area for a building that would fit the height of their equipment.

“I remember driving around with our real estate agent, he’s like, ‘Well, if you want to do this in Richmond, I can show you 30 things, but if you want to do it in Charlottesville, then you only get this and that,’” Fulton said.

“I think our search was almost nine months, and he just thought of this place out of the blue and they were having an opening the same time we were looking for it, and we came by, we took a look around and we said, ‘we’ll take it, this is perfect,’” Adair said.

They looked closer to downtown Charlottesville, but the available buildings required more work inside to be suitable for a brewery.

They’re also trying to tap into the market of drivers on U.S. 29, as there are no breweries in the urban area of Albemarle County.

“It’s all downtown, it’s all close to the Corner, and we think this is going to be a great place for people to stop by after work, pick up a bottle or two and take a little break,” Adair said.

The brewery has 6,000 square feet of production space and a 1,500-square-foot tasting room. They’ll start with about 1,500 barrels a year, Fulton said, but they have the capability to expand to 15,000 barrels.

“The concept is to do lower-alcohol beers in general across the board that have interesting interplay of flavor, low bitterness — something that’s not going to wear your pallet out, but that will reward somebody who’s looking for something complex that might not want a 9.5 percent [alcohol] double IPA,” Fulton said.

One of the first beers Fulton is working on for the brewery is a hop-forward blonde ale that is 4 percent alcohol.

“We’re fortunate here in Virginia, and Charlottesville specifically, and surrounding areas that there are a lot of good breweries, and there’s a lot of good breweries making a lot of really good IPAs right around here,” he said.

The trio’s eventual goal is for Reason to become a production brewery and distribute their beer across Virginia and in surrounding states. Adair said they also hope to work with local restaurants on hosting pairing dinners and tap takeovers.

“We want beers that you can pair with a great meal and I think that nods towards our idea of balance in the beer,” Adair said. “It’s gonna have enough flavor, enough acidity to stand up to some richer, more interesting food, but at the same time, it’s not going to be so boozy or bitter that it gets in the way of your enjoyment.”

And the brewery’s focus is really on the beer, the founders emphasized, which is where the name Reason Beer came from.

“We ended up coming to the word as a question, ‘What is the reason?’” Adair said. “For us, it’s the beer, but a reason is what drives everybody’s actions. It can be what you do every day, what drives your action, your direction. For us, it’s the beer.”

13 March, 2017