USA, VA: Wolfe Street Brewing to officially launch in Harrisonburg on December 5

Located downtown near the corner of Wolfe and Liberty streets, Wolfe Street Brewing Co. is the newest addition to Harrisonburg’s growing collection of local breweries. It joins three others: Brothers Craft Brewing, Three Notch’d Brewing Company and Pale Fire Brewing Co, The Breeze reported on December 2.

Wolfe Street is owned by 2005 JMU graduate Josh Canada, who also owns Back Bay Brewing in Virginia Beach.

Canada considered opening another brewery after Leo Cook, one of his business partners, called to tell him he had found a unique location for one.

“I really liked Harrisonburg, I liked JMU, I liked the location,”

Canada said. “We went up there and checked it out and thought it would be perfect.”

To see the brewery now, it’s hard to imagine the challenges Canada and his business partners initially encountered. Government approval for a liquor license took 90 days longer than expected and they had to work the kinks out of the brewing equipment.

However, once the issues were resolved, Wolfe Street had its soft opening on Oct. 24 and began operating on a condensed schedule. The brewery is currently open Thursday through Sunday, but will begin opening on Tuesdays after the grand opening scheduled for December 5, which it’s calling the “Grand Opening Prohibition Repeal.”

In addition to a large brewing system, Wolfe Street Brewing Co. has a smaller brewing system called Ruby Street, which allows it to brew one keg at a time. This enables the brewery to experiment with new flavors.

“We like to get weird with beer,” Canada said.

Wolfe Street’s plan is to introduce a new flavor every two weeks, keeping a rotating tap of six different beers. For the grand opening, the brewery will introduce its indigenous species series, which includes Blue Hole American IPA and Shenandoah Valley Milk Stout. Each of the beers is brewed with ingredients from the Shenandoah Valley.

“That’s why we have these businesses — because it’s fun and we get to use our imagination and come up with cool, odd, weird things and get creative,” Canada said.

The brewery hopes to move toward distributing craft beers in local stores around March. It’s also planning on selling kegs and offering keg delivery because, as Canada puts it, it’s a “pain in the butt to go get kegs.”

04 December, 2015