How Heist Brewery went from an after thought in the city’s craft beer scene to producing the best beer in town
Just before 7 A.M.. on a Saturday in late February, Spencer Farrell jumps on top of a chair in front of 100 or so people outside Heist Brewery. Some of them have been here since the place closed at 2 A.M.. A firepit still burns on the patio.
Everyone is here for the release of Heist’s Cataclysm III, a Russian imperial stout brewed with Ugandan and Madagascan vanilla beans and aged in Whistle Pig Rye and Jefferson Rye bourbon barrels. It’s one of the most highly anticipated beers in some time for Charlotte’s exploding craft scene.
Farrell, the general manager at Heist, rings a bell to get everyone’s attention, surveys the crowd, and says, “OK, first off, this is ridiculous.”
Camping overnight for a beer release is nothing new in the craft beer world. But here, such a scene is validation for a brewery that just a few years ago barely registered a blip in the Charlotte craft beer community.
When Kurt Hogan opened Heist Brewery in the growing NoDa neighborhood in 2012, the goal was to use the brew house as a research and development facility. There, the brewers Hogan hired could experiment with different styles in small batches. Those that didn’t work would be cast aside and those that did would go into Heist’s rotation. The idea was to compile the brewery’s best beers, so that when it opened a production facility one day, it could hit the market strong.
Early reviews of Heist were positive—but more for a strong cocktail program and unique dishes such as pork belly corn dogs and duck flatbread.
The brewpub’s beer was a different story. The styles lacked character and were mediocre at best, especially considering what other breweries in town were producing. One Yelp reviewer called it “downright awful … not just passable bad, like undrinkable bad.” Hopes of starting a production facility and going to market quickly faded.
Esta historia es de la edición July 2017 de Charlotte Magazine.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición July 2017 de Charlotte Magazine.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without
