[piano intro] -[Deborah] Next on "North Carolina Weekend," join us at Olde Mecklenburg Brewing and Beer Garden in Charlotte, as we take you on a brewery tour around the state.

We'll visit Spaceway Brewery, Hillman Beer, Wicked Weed, and more.

Coming up next.

- [Announcer] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[cheerful music] ♪ - Hi, everyone.

Welcome to "North Carolina Weekend," and no, we are not in Germany.

We are in Charlotte, at Olde Mecklenburg Brewing and Beer Garden, where you'll feel like you've been transported to a beer hall somewhere in Cologne or Dusseldorf.

Here at Charlotte's largest and oldest beer garden and brewery, they adhere to the oldest beer purity law in the world, that beer should only contain four ingredients.

Water, malt, hops, and yeast.

I hear it's great with a pretzel or some brats.

Now it's no secret that the craft brewing industry has really taken off in North Carolina.

So let's start in Rocky Mount with Briana Brake transforming the industry.

- I had a dude come in here the other day and asked me for a Corona.

And then somebody told him, "No, that lady right there made this beer and how dare you come in here and say Corona."

[light music] The events that craft breweries have are, you know, it's a bluegrass music, it's trivia nights.

I'm trying to create a space where people can come in and say, "Oh, I can relate to this music," or, "I can relate to the art on the wall, or the vibe."

- When you walk into Spaceway here, it's like the walls kind of come down and everybody that appreciates good beer, you know, the openness, the conversation, I think it's good for the community.

- Spaceway is from the poet, musician, composer Sun Ra.

He had a song called "We Travel the Spaceways," and he's kind of credited with being the patron saint or like godfather of Afro futurism, which is art kind of focused on images of the future that don't just include but depict black people, brown people as leaders in their own spaces and not just as background workers or helpers.

[light music] The mill was built in 1818.

Slaves built it, slaves worked it.

I feel it when I come out here.

Talk about ghosts and all that kind of stuff.

I've made it a point, just take a breath every time I step out here, and a moment to like, honor, reflect.

In North Carolina, I am the only black woman owned and operated brewery.

I'm kind of, I guess, unicorn right now, but the ancestors are probably looking at me like, girl, you ain't doing nothing.

[laughs] - Black women in North Carolina have actually been a part of beer history for a really long time.

We have stories like Patsy Young, who was formerly enslaved, basically took her freedom and ran away.

We know because of runaway slave ads that among her talents was that she was a master brewer.

There are people like Patricia Henry, who was not only the first African American woman, but the first woman to be a brewmaster for a major brewery, which was Miller.

She ran the Miller plant in Eden, North Carolina for several years.

Seeing Bree in this space feels like a continuation of this legacy.

Obviously a lot of that has to do with reclaiming this narrative of who gets to brew and who gets to kind of embody the identity of a brewer.

The more people come from different backgrounds, they're gonna have different influences on the way they prepare it, the ingredients, like, you know, my stout, Dondada Cardamom Stout, there's not a lot of people putting cardamom in a beer.

That's all reflective of the stuff that I eat, which comes from the African diaspora culture.

I describe Dondada as like a old fashioned cocktail in a beer.

It's not as heavy as most stouts, but it's heavy enough so that you know it's a stout, and you get all the flavors in there.

So you're gonna get notes of chocolate, coffee, and then of course the cardamon, and sweet orange peel.

And also a little caramel in there.

Sometimes it's music that I'm listening to.

Somebody might just, I'll hear one line and it triggers something and I'm like, oh, that'd be cool.

The rap group Digable Planets, they have a song called "Agent 7 Creamy Spy," and I was like, yep, that's it.

- This is the perfect place to stop for the night.

They have the tiny houses here.

You've got a choice between seven to eight restaurants, 10 different breweries.

There's a river walk down the Char River, there's a waterfall, there's a park, there's a lot of things you can do without ever leaving the campus.

- You will experience what breweries were, have always been about, what beer has always been about, which is bringing people together.

You will feel that when you also experience Spaceway and Bree's beers.

- [Deborah] Spaceway Brewing taproom is at 1151 Falls Road, Suite 2003, in Rocky Mount.

That's in the Rocky Mount Mill, and it's open Wednesday through Sunday.

For more information, give them a call at [919] 667-8141, or check them out online at spacewaybrewing.com.

A brewery has the power to transform a small community, and that's exactly what happened at Old Fort, where three local entrepreneurs took an old sock factory and made it into a hub for the community.

Let's join Theresa Litsky at Hillman Beer.

[cheerful music] - We're at Hillman Beer in Old Fort, North Carolina.

- [Theresa] It's no secret that Old Fort is bordered by the beauty and majesty of the Pisgah National Forest, but what is new is the town now has a brewery, and locals are loving it.

- The beer, it's too good.

- I love the beer.

I like lots of kind of beers, but my favorites are the dark beer.

- I have my few that I like, and there's one that I have yet to try.

- My favorite is probably the Old Fort Lager.

- From the hazy, which is what this one is.

So yeah, they just do a great job with all their beer.

- [Theresa] They are the Hillmans.

Brad, his brother Greg, and Greg's wife Brandi.

They opened Hillman beer in Old Fort in 2020.

The brew pub is part of the revitalization underway in Old Fort.

- Yeah, we just saw the potential in this exit where you're not too far from Asheville, you're not too far from Charlotte.

You can make it a day trip, you can make it a weekend trip.

- [Theresa] If you like craft beer, there's a high probability Hillman has something for you.

- Yeah, we have 20 different beers on tap right now, so we pretty much have a style for everybody.

- We hated to go into a tap room and they had 10 beers, and none of them were IPAs.

You know, we wanna make sure we offer a German beer, a wheat beer, an IPA, a dark beer, you know, it gives everyone an option.

- I like a lot of Belgian beers, our triple's really good, Golden Strong's really good.

- I love the ESB, it's my favorite, but in the fall, I love the Iffy.

- Especially if you're a regular, you're going to get tired of drinking the same things unless you're a creature of habit like I am and I always drink the same thing, but we try to have something for everyone.

Even the people that wouldn't necessarily always drink a beer, we can always point you in the direction of something that you would've never thought that you would actually like to drink.

- They make and keg their beer on site using local ingredients when they can.

- We use mostly all local malts from River Bend Malt House.

They're located in Gerber Village in South Asheville.

- And they provide their spent grain to local farmers to use as feed.

- It gets it off our hands and then they're able to use it and it doesn't just go to waste.

- Hillman Beer also makes sure their customers have plenty to eat.

- It's kinda like elevated pub food.

You have your burgers, chicken sandwiches, wraps.

- Thumbs up - Salads.

We have gluten free options.

- The wings are great.

I ate them for a long time.

I ordered the kale salad with falafel.

- And I kind of went on the other end of the spectrum.

I didn't get kale and falafel, but I got a, a Ruben, corned beef Ruben and fries.

Yeah, there's a reason that's my favorite.

- It's a nice mix of if you wanna cheat and be bad, have the burger and fries, go for it.

But you know, if you wanna get the kale salad with turkey on it, then you know, you'll feel better about the beer you're having with your meal.

- [Theresa] Location contributes to the success of several businesses in Old Fort and Hillman Beer is no different.

They've renovated a former manufacturing site along beautiful Mill Creek to allow the glorious outside in.

- We cut out all these doors, we raised the floor that was concrete.

We built the deck, so it was a very dark space because it was a sock factory, it was a mill.

But you know, when you knock out all the walls and put in windows and stuff, you can certainly change the environment, the space.

So every now and then you'll see somebody fishing right in the creek, right outside the brewery.

It's awesome.

- And Old Fort, it's got the outdoors happening.

It's so exciting, hiking, biking, trails, water sports, that's a kind of a similar mindset of community.

I think that flock is at that enjoy craft beer.

So it just, I think grew out of a love of the outdoors and craft beer.

- If you want somewhere that you can get away and relax and just refrain from your normal grind, this is the place to do it.

[upbeat music] - [Deborah] Hillman Beer has two locations.

Asheville and Old Fort.

Their Old Fort tap room is at 78 Catawba Avenue and it's open daily.

For more information, check out their website at hillmanbeer.com.

[upbeat music] - [Theresa] Olde Mecklenburg Brewing Beer Garden and Brau Haus truly sets itself apart from other institutions.

Here on this eight acre property.

You can enjoy beer with friends and family in a stunning park-like oasis.

Take a tour of their award-winning brewery and sample traditional German fair like brats and pretzels in the Brau Haus.

I spoke with founder and beer master John Marrino, who shared more.

John, how did you come up with the concept for Olde Mecklenburg?

Were you inspired by the city of Charlotte or maybe Germany itself?

- Well, a couple things came together that resulted in OMB.

One started a long time ago when I was 23 and I went to work for a German manufacturing company.

They asked me to go to Germany and I ended up spending five years in Europe and I just fell in love with German beer and the whole culture surrounding it.

Fast forward to 2004, I was here in Charlotte, the largest city in the US without a brewery at the time.

And so boom, light bulb moment, I decided to open a brewery and make the beer that I missed.

So, that's it in a nutshell.

- And a lot of people are really glad that you did.

So tell me about the purity law.

Is it easier or harder to make a beer with just four ingredients?

- Well, I wouldn't say it's harder or easier, but what I will tell you is that you can't hide defects in pure beer.

So it's very important that your quality is perfect if you're making beer with just four ingredients.

The four ingredients are water, malt, hops, and yeast.

And the other thing that I like about the purity law is that it's a testament to the skill of the brewery when you can produce such a wide variety of wonderful beers, all of which are very different from just four all natural ingredients.

And that's what makes me excited.

- John, tell me about some of the traditional German dishes that are on the menu.

- Well, you can't really get through a German meal without having potatoes, pork or cabbage, and usually all three.

But here at OMB we have a wide variety of American faire and healthy salads as well.

But of course we have the German staples.

We have a number of sausages on the menu, brockwurst, bowenwurst, knockwurst, weisswurst.

We also have schnitzel, which our customers love.

If you want to try the sauerkraut, I would recommend in our Ruben sandwich, which is fantastic.

And then we also have all the German sides.

And then finally of course is the Bavarian pretzel and that's our number one selling item.

And everybody wants to have a pretzel with a beer.

- What's unique about a Bavarian pretzel?

- They're soft on the inside and crisp on the outside and it just goes so well with beer and we make a a beer cheese with our copper beer, which is fantastic.

So people love them.

- Tell me about Olde Mecklenburg's role in the community.

- I think our job is to bring people together.

OMB is a social gathering place.

It's really a family friendly environment.

We have people of all ages, you know, from one year old to 70 year old.

People love it here.

- Well, I think there's nothing left to do, but go grab a beer.

- Okay, let's go.

[upbeat music] - The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery and Beer Garden is at 4150 Yancey Road in Charlotte and they're open every day at 11:00 a.m.. Visit them online at oldemeckbrew.com or give them a call at [704] 525-5644.

If you've ever been to the Outer Banks, you know it can get pretty windy.

Well, why not power a brewery with all that wind, let's meet the innovative brewers at Outer Banks Brewing Station.

- [All] Cheers.

- People come here, we hope they leave with full stomachs.

They enjoyed our beer, got outside, their kids got to play on the our pirate ship, maybe listened to some music.

Just have a good time.

That's really good.

Brewing Station's known for a lot of different things.

We're a brewery, we're a restaurant.

We have live music.

We generally run on top about 12 beers.

We brew everything on site.

We only have two that stay on year round.

One is an oast, it's a cold style beer.

It's our lightest beer.

And then we've got a lemon grass wheat.

It's always available year round.

- Everything else rotates.

Early in this season, we do a lot of lagers and then we in the summer with the heat and the speed, we do a lot of ales.

We do our seasonal beers, of course, I think we've counted over 170 different beers over the time that we've brewed.

- [Narrator] A period of time that now stretches back decades.

Eric Reese and Arbery Davis first talked about opening a brewery back when they served together in the Peace Corps in the early 1990s.

A decade later in 2001, their dream became a reality when the Outer Banks Brewing Station welcomed its first customers.

- [Eric] We started out as a higher end, just exclusively dinner restaurant and then we expanded into lunch.

- Our food is known for, of course it's seafood.

We have a lot of that.

- Shrimp and grits.

And then we have a wonderful scallops on risotto dish.

- [Eric] We've got an innovative chef who does some incredible specials.

- Good all around food, anything from steaks to brockwurst, to bar food if you want it.

And we like it all.

- [Narrator] So much so that Ty Huband and his wife Elizabeth had the outer Banks's Brewing station on their must do list every time they're in town.

The dedication to doing everything locally is a big part of the appeal.

- We really like going only to places with micro breweries and local beer.

So we love coming in here, knowing it's being made, sitting outside, listening to music.

We like everything from a light beer to a stout, so we kind of do a mix of everything.

It's one of our favorite stops.

When you find the wind turbine, it's when you're turning in to have a beer.

- [Narrator] Without a doubt, the wind turbine helps make the Outer Banks's Brewing Station a bit easier to find, but it's much more than a beacon or showpiece.

Sustainability is just as fundamental to the brewing station as its pints and platters.

- Everybody on the Outer Banks and the people that visit the Outer Banks, your first feeling is the connection to the environment.

- It's important to us personally.

We live on a sandbar that is a very fragile environment, so anything that we can do to make things better, we're willing to try it.

The wind turbine is the first turbine onsite of any restaurant or brew pub in the country, and we confirmed that with the Brewers Association and the National Restaurant Association back when we first got it up.

It saves us anywhere from, depending on the month and the wind, anywhere from 200 to $350 a month.

- [Narrator] The wind turbine is the focal point of an outdoor space that features a full bar and eating area games and activities for kids and a stage for live performances.

The turbine may be the most prominent sustainable element of the brewing station, but it's not the only green amenity attracting customers.

- I was looking for charging stations along the coast and I saw that the Outer Banks's Brewing Station had a charging station and that was really cool.

I said, well, maybe we could come out here and charge and have some food and you know, have some beer too at the same time.

- [Narrator] The three electric car chargers, two for Tesla's and one universal are one of the Brewing Station's newest editions.

There's also a pasture to plate program with byproducts from the brewery one day making their way back onto the menu, at least indirectly.

- Our spent grain that comes out of our brewing process is picked up by Cartwright Farms, raises up cattle on our spent grain, and then we buy them back from him.

- This is a very unique vibe to have all of the sustainability options with the wind and the charging and the food and outdoor seating.

It is unique.

That's why we're here right now.

- There's a lot of places on the outer banks that you go to that are must visits, and I've always hoped and believed that we could become one of those points of interest.

We morph to what the community asks of us.

- [Eric] It's been a great 20 years and we're looking forward to more.

- The Outer Banks Brewing Station is at 600 South Croatan Highway in Kill Devil Hills, and it's open daily except Tuesdays.

Give them a call at [252] 449-2739 or go online to obbrewing.com.

One of the largest craft brewers in the state is Wicked Weed with four locations in Asheville, including three tap rooms and a fine dining restaurant.

Wicked Weed shows no signs of slowing down.

[dramatic music] - So there was this great story in the early 1500s in 1519 King Henry VIII proclaimed that hops were a wicked pernicious weed and would ruin beer.

The brewers, on the other hand, decided that hops were delicious and that it was something that should be in beer, and that's what it is today.

And the story I think really reflects the rebel spirit and the integrity we have in quality.

And I think it's just a great backbone for the ethos of the Wicked Weed brand.

[light music] - This was an original Gulf gas station, a showpiece Gulf gas station in the 1930s and early forties.

And the evolution's there.

So seeing the brick, seeing the wood ceiling, seeing the original concrete floor, we didn't want to mess this building up, so we just wanted to to polish a few things and show off what Asheville created.

The brewery started with the coming together of two families.

The Guppy's and Dickinson's, family history goes back 55 years.

Being a beer lover, we love creating experiences and creating great craft.

And so at the time we're Beer City USA a lot of great beer being produced, but we didn't want to only focus on the beer aspect of things.

We wanted to focus on the customer service, the atmosphere, and the culinary program.

[upbeat music] - As far as beer goes, you know, we've kind of gone from where we look at the traditional styles of IPAs and brown ales and lagers and things like that you think of as as a brewery, but sour beers and barrel aging and then the expansion into natural wines and ciders.

We really try to reinforce all of our people to be the best kind of artist and creator they can be.

And we try to support that.

- I always say we're a company of creators.

We have 350 employees now at this time, and we do everything internally, whether it's our fabrication shop, doing all the metal and woodworking.

You see the furniture, the flight boards, all the decor, the murals that we're doing.

We have great graphic designers and artists, you know, our chefs, our brewers, our servers, we're always creating a new experience.

So I think Wicked Weed and the best way to put it, crafts everything we touch.

[upbeat music] - I love Wicked Weed because it's a good local spot.

The service is excellent and every time we come here we just, we're always made to feel special.

My favorite beer is Freak of Nature, best beer, hands down.

And my favorite food is the Bison Burger.

- I have many, many favorites, but I do have to say when it comes to sours, they're definitely hands down the best I've ever had.

- Of course, our staple and our flagship beers, which would be Pernicious and Freak of Nature.

When we have our menage freak, that is a very popular party that we have and that's when we release our triple IPA.

And then one of our cocktails, the one favorite would probably be the Tequila Stings like a B.

- We have four unique locations here in Asheville.

When you go to our facilities, we want you to have a different experience every time.

And so we have an original location, the Brew Pub, where we have about 30 different beers pouring at any given time, hitting all the different styles.

We walk down the street, we go to the Funkatorium, and this was really the first sour tap room and barrel warehouse in the entire East Coast.

One year later, we open up our production brewery, 70,000 square feet where we're producing all of our beer via cans and draft.

We also have, it's called Wicked Weed West, a little tap room that overlooks the entire brewery.

In 2016, we open up a larger facility down in Arden that is our headquarters, that's our new sour production brewery, and really pushing the boundaries, what we can do at each location.

[upbeat music] - We're a brewery first, right?

And beer is the backbone of everything you do.

It's the lifeblood of the company.

But with that, we've taken that and kind of channeled into the restaurant experiences and to the food and beverage industry.

And so we've dedicated an entire facility to that, which is called the Funkatorium, that also houses our new fine dining restaurant, Cultura, which we're happy to say has just reopened in the past couple weeks since COVID.

And we did receive a James Beard nomination in 2020 for best new restaurant there.

This is an amazing culinary town where we have access to all these beautiful ingredients and we really try to showcase that on the menu, focused on direct relationships with our farms and vendors putting, you know, what we think is our take on kind of southern Appalachian cuisine on the plate every day, along with this huge list of sour beers that you would never be able to try anywhere else in the world.

So to have those two places to really showcase the full breadth of what craft beer today is, what it was yesterday, and what it'll be tomorrow.

I think that's the really cool thing that Wicked Weed gets to deliver.

And the only way you could is by having these unique spaces that tell that story.

[upbeat music] I think we have a great community reach in the work we do with nonprofits.

We've been very tied to supporting the community to philanthropies since the early days of the company.

From there, we've kind of amplified that with the Beers That Build program, taking different beers that we're producing and giving proceeds back to certain causes.

Next weekend is Pride ToberFest, one of my favorite.

To me, this is the future of great companies.

It is our job as corporations to bring positive change to our communities and to our world.

And I do feel confident that every day we're doing our best we can to do that.

So next time you're in Asheville, come to Wicked Weed.

I promise you'll find something exciting and new.

Love to have you down.

Pull up a chair and have a pint.

Cheers.

Wicked Weed Brewing Pub is at 91 Biltmore Ave. in Asheville and they'er open every day at 11 AM.

To find out more, you can give them a call at [828] 575-9599 or go online to wickedweedbrewing.com.

Well, that's it for tonight's show.

Had a great time out here at Olde Mecklenburg Brewing and Beer Garden in Charlotte.

It's a great place for an award-winning old fashioned cold German beer.

And if you've missed anything in today's show, just remember you can watch us again online at pbsnc.org.

Have a great "North Carolina Weekend" everyone.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Narrator] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smokey Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[light music]