I love a good beer and Greenville has plenty of amazing spots to sit down with a cold one. This time on Access Carolina, I highlight some of my favorites.
https://www.foxcarolina.com/video/2022/10/21/local-spots-that-offer-great-beer-experience/
Thomas Creek Brewery: The First Greenville Brewery
For Tom Davis, the co-founder of Thomas Creek Brewery, his passion for craft beer started long before he ever brewed a drop of the stuff.
“It all began at a place called International Café way back when I was working at Ruby Tuesday’s in 1982,” he said. “On top of that, my dad was a beer can collector, so he would bring cans from all over the country. At that time there were no such things as craft beer, but there was still beer being put in cans from smaller breweries – bigger than what we would consider a craft brewery today – we’re talking beers like Hamm’s and Falstaff.”
He tells me this as we’re sitting at the bar of the Thomas Creek Brewery tap room, outside of downtown Greenville, South Carolina on a Thursday afternoon. It’s early and there are only two other patrons, sitting against the far wall sipping beers and chatting. He was pulled from the kitchen when I got there and he was still wearing black sanitary gloves. His voice is low and measured and I can only hope my recorder picks it up over the sound of the men talking and the music playing.
“At Ruby Tuesday’s we would go downstairs to the café and we’d have beers from all over the world. Again, they weren’t craft beers per se, but you might be able to find Newcastle. At that point I don’t think Sierra Nevada had even started.”
(It had, brewing the first batch in November 1980, but would not have come close to making its way to South Carolina until some years later.)
Soon, Davis says, he learned from someone that you could actually make beers like the ones they were drinking at the café and the beer that did it, that set Davis on a path that he is still on some twenty years later, was Hofbrau Oktoberfest.
“I started looking more into homebrewing. I bought every book I could get my hands on. I got Malt and Brewing Science, the Siebel Institute of Technology’s brewing textbook, as a birthday present,” he said. “I read it cover to cover six times. After close to a year/ year and a half of reading, I built my system to the specs basically like we brew today. We do all-grain, liquid malt, filtered, and force-carbonated. I never used a kit, I put my first recipe together myself.”
Then, when then the brewpub laws changed in 1994, the owner of the restaurant Davis was working at asked him if he wanted to be involved putting a brewpub in the restaurant. Davis was interested, and he credits that question with what really set him down his path. The expense of putting a brewpub in, though, was more than the owner wanted and so Davis and his dad got together to fund the brewery portion of the brewpub.
“Thomas Creek started as a leasing company. We leased the equipment to the restaurant. At the same time, I was working and brewing there.”
Three and a half years later, the Davises decided they wanted to get out of the restaurant business and further the brewery project, converting what they were doing into a full-time brewery. They bought a defunct brewery out of western North Carolina, Woodhouse Brewing, and put the equipment in storage for a year while they got the facility Thomas Creek currently sits in ready.
“My dad’s next-door neighbor is a contractor and land-owner so he decided he would build this building for us to spec, and in doing so he built two more beside us and was leasing those out short term,” Davis says. “We gradually took those over and had two more buildings built.”
By the time Thomas Creek opened, the state’s first brewery (that is still running), Palmetto Brewing in Charleston, had been open for a few years. New South Brewing, in Myrtle Beach, also opened up around the same time. The only other brewery in the Greenville area, Reedy River Brewing, had opened and closed by the time Thomas Creek came around.
The decision of what to brew when they opened, Davis says, was easy. Being a bartender, he knew the trends of the predominantly Bud Lite/Miller Lite/ Coors Lite crowd. The first two beers their made were amber ales, one of which they still brew to this day (and it is still one of the top sellers). They also brewed a beer based on Pete’s Wicked they called Malty Grain which sold well originally but was discontinued after a while because “the name wasn’t catchy enough, I guess.”
(For Thomas Creek’s thirteenth anniversary, they brought Malty Grain back as a special release, but it has not been back since.)
Since those first batches, Thomas Creek has grown and grown, becoming one of the largest in the state (Palmetto is the largest), producing around 9750 barrels in 2017. (This number does not include the beers that Thomas Creek contracts for other breweries, such as Inlet Brewery, which accounts for around 40% of the brewery’s production.) As of this writing, Thomas Creek’s capacity is 23,000 barrels per year, and they were currently eyeing a possible sale to get the capital needed to do what they want to with the equipment they have. Currently, Thomas Creek brews nine beers, including collaborations with a local tap room, Community Tap, named Trifecta IPA, and a Pilsner licensed by local radio hosts The Rise Guys named P1 Pilsner (“The best beer on the planet”). You can get their beers across the state and in North Carolina or, if you’re flying out of Greenville-Spartanburg airport, you can stop in their Terminal A taproom for a pint or three before a flight.
This past weekend, I participated in the Ville to Ville Craft Brew Relay, a 72-mile run from Asheville, NC to Greenville, SC (Way to go Team Legends of the Drunken Temple). Two of my best friends from college were on the team, too, and my partner was our faithful driver (bless her for putting up with six stinky people for ~11 hours). Broken into 12 legs, I ran legs 4 and 12, 7.55 and 3.95 miles, respectively. At the end was a big party with music, food, and all the good stuff.
The night before, we kept it light, instead choosing to overindulge in pasta and bread and tuna steaks. As I was getting ready to meet up with the group, an idea dawned on me — bring some nonalcoholic beer. I had joked about carboloading, but the thought struck me that I could actually do as much with some NA beer without risking, you know, getting shit hammered and throwing up on the side of a random road in the mountains of North Carolina. Thankfully, I had gotten some Athletic Brewing Company beers back in January to try for Dry January which, while I made it 3 weeks into Jan, I never did try the ABC beers. This seemed like the perfect time.
I threw a six-pack of the Upside Dawn Golden Ale and the Run Wild IPA into our collective cooler and called it a night. Now, before this, I had mostly laughed off non-alcoholic beers. Not that I have anything wrong with NA options, but working in food and booze for years, I never wanted for beer, wine, or anything else. When I wanted to take a break from drinking, I’d just drink seltzer, if anything other than water, coffee, or tea. I had friends who had given up drinking for various lengths of time and had enjoyed NA beers, but the few times I had had them amounted to when I was a kid and would take St. Pauli Girl beers out of my parents’ basement fridge. I remember the cool, crisp taste and the bubbles. I liked the bubbles as a kid.
Now, though, with the ability to drink whatever I want, why would I bother drinking a beer without alcohol, I asked myself. Then, I ran 7.55 miles of straight hills in a light dusting of snow. My first leg was rated the second hardest of the 12, and well, yes. Yes it was. An initial big hill just led to what I thought of as a Limp Bizkit leg. It just kept rollin’, rollin’, rollin’.
Yes, I did make that joke.
My leg ended at a local Hendersonville Brewery, and I would’ve loved to sit with a beer (my next leg wasn’t for another six or seven hours), but we had to get to the next transition point. No beer for me.
On the way to the next stop, I grabbed a Golden out of the cooler and chugged it.
My god, it was everything I needed and wanted at that moment. Yes, one of my nipples was raw and dangerously close to bleeding. Yes, I smelled like what happens when you leave a boy’s locker room closed off without ventilation for a week. But its light and pretty balanced profile with just enough of a hop kick (it comes in at 15 IBU), was absolutely perfect. It was the definition of thirst-quenching. When I run, I sometimes envision air coming in through my mouth and nose and pervading every area of my body, a picture of a vascular system being pumped up with fresh oxygen. It helps me focus during a run. This beer did the same thing here. I felt its cool crispness pervading me. Attaching itself to my already tightening quads and calves. Replenishing my definitely empty stomach.
By the time we got to the next stop, and we were waiting for our runner to finish his leg, I cracked one of the IPAs — no NA beer left behind, after all. If it were warmer, the bright hoppiness would’ve been more appealing to me — I love a good, cold IPA on a hot summer day, especially here in South Carolina — but even though the temperature hadn’t yet broken 45 degrees, it was still enjoyable. I preferred the Golden, but my teammate preferred the IPA after his legs.
Sitting in a van for 10 hours, with some time running, gave me time to think about NA beers. While I probably won’t have them with regularity, I can honestly say I now see the value in them (outside of being able to offer someone who doesn’t drink an option beyond water, seltzer, or juice). I’m team Athletic Brewing now, and will definitely be packing more when we do Ville to Ville again next year, as we signed up as a team the next morning to do it again. It may have hurt at times, but we hurt together, and we did it (while also beating our estimated end time by 20 minutes).
Cough Athletic Brewing, want to sponsor us next year? Cough
Cough I’m not kidding, call me Cough
Ah, made-up drinking holidays. I have a love/hate relationship with them. On one hand, bars usually have good specials for specific days, entreating imbibers to reap the rewards that Big [Insert style of alcoholic beverage here] have decided to create. On the other hand, there are so many of these holidays that practically every day is dedicated to some sort of drink. Hell, some spirits — whisk(e)y comes to mind — have multiple days (National Whiskey Day, International Whiskey Day, County-wide Drink Whiskey With Your Dog Day, etc). Regardless of how you feel about drinking holidays, they’re here to stay.
And here we are on another of these days, one of the O.G. ones as far as I can tell, National Beer Day. Straight, simple, to the point. We’re here for beer, just like beers been there for us.
(Cue the Friends theme.)
(Now do the clapping part.)
I’m not a huge fan of listicles — this comes from having to write at least one a week for almost five years — but in a case like this, I think it works. If it’s National Beer Day, I want to have a few different beers, not just one. With over 9,000 breweries as of 2021 in the US alone, it’d be a damn shame to only try one beer from one brewery.
But also, moderation, so I picked three beers that I’d be drinking today. I went with an easy drinker, a reinvented classic, and a new beer from a Charlotte brewery.
ABV: 4.5%
Style: Light lager with lime
This beer is exactly what you think it is. Easy drinking with a little kick of lime, it’s a porch pounder, a tailgate champion, a hiking and fishing companion. It’ll go where you go and keep you refreshed the whole time. It’s a beer you don’t have to think about in the best way. Replace the Bud Lite and Mich Ultra Limes in your pool cooler this summer with these. You won’t be disappointed. There’s not much more I can say. Firestone Walkermade a thirst-quenching, session beer. It’s proof that you don’t have to overcomplicate something to make it good.
ABV: 9.5%
Style: Fruited Sour Tripel
By now, everyone should be familiar with Victory’s Golden Monkey. The Belgian-style tripel is widely available and has been for at least 14 years (I first found it at the lone craft beer shop in my small college town, when my roommate and I would pick beers based on the label). Golden Monkey is the #1 craft Belgian in the US, while Sour Monkey — another iteration of the beer — is the #1 craft Sour. (This information comes from the market research firm IRI, should you want to learn more.)
Berry Monkey takes what works so well with the other monkeys and makes it fruity. Real raspberries are added to the brew and deliver a sweetness to both the nose and body before the sour pucker kicks in. Sours are not really my thing, but I found Berry Monkey easier to drink than many others I’ve tried. I wouldn’t have more than two in a sitting, but for sour fans — or fans of big, strong beers — it’s worth a shot. If you’re not used to big Belgian beers, though, it’ll definitely catch up with you quick (like when you stand up). Just remember to have a glass of water nearby.
ABV: 8.8%
Style: Double IPA with lemon
I used to spend a good deal of time in Charlotte, where Sycamore is based, and would therefore have access to a variety of the beers they produce. Now, living in South Carolina, I can still get some Sycamore beers on tap, but it’s usually limited to their Mountain Candy IPA (which is not a bad thing at all, I dig the beer).
Super Lemon Haze does everything its name indicates. It’s a big beer, and while you can definitely tell it’s a DIPA and packs a punch, it isn’t a chore to get through. The highlight is just how much lemon they were able to infuse into each and every atom of the beer. You get fresh lemon zest on the nose, bright and sharp lemon on the palate, and the tingle along your tongue of biting into a lemon as a finish. This massive flavor comes from a blend of lemon puree, dried lemon zest, and lemon-flavored hops. The beer reminds me of the sun coming through the windows in the morning and of highlighters on a blank white page. It’s the beer equivalent of the fresh feeling after using a tongue scraper.
