A local brewery celebrates a five-year anniversary thanks to community support (and great beer).
Lindsey Hull
A Few Old Goats Brewing celebrates their five-year anniversary.
A Few Old Goats Brewing will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Saturday. Together with their wives, co-owners Curtis Reed and Kenny McGraw opened the brewery in the West End Flats in 2018. The neighborhood rallied around the establishment, according to Kenny McGraw. “It’s like Cheers, in some ways,” he says.
Kenny McGraw credits Curtis Reed for designing the interior space. “We always wanted to be a corner bar or a neighborhood place, but the layout was also dictated by what we were working with,” Kenny McGraw says.
Curtis Reed’s college-aged daughter, Kara Reed, was pouring beer on a recent visit. She says that her father built the concrete-topped bar himself.
The result is an intimate space in which neighborhood regulars and beer connoisseurs can gather for a pint or two, play one of the numerous board games that the brewery keeps on hand, or relax on the adjacent outdoor patio. Dogs are welcome too, as long as they are kept on a short leash.
Kenny McGraw anticipates that their anniversary party will be low-key. His wife, Joyce McGraw, will help him open up the brewery on Saturday, making preparations for the crowds to come. They will serve four new barrel-aged releases as well as some vintage brews, Kenny McGraw says, indicating that they keep some barrels on hand for special occasions. .
“We’re just going to hang out with as many people who got us here as we can,” Kenny McGraw says.
Both couples hail from Cleveland, Ohio. Kenny and Joyce McGraw moved to the area in 2010. They met Curtis and Lisa Reed shortly after they moved to Roanoke. The two couples bonded over a shared enthusiasm for the Cleveland Browns.
Kenny McGraw began brewing beer in his garage, but it was a lonely pursuit. “I was a brew widow,” Kenny McGraw says. That’s when he invited Curtis Reed to brew alongside him. From there, the production was full steam ahead.
“Three years before we opened, we joked about running a brewery some day,” Kenny McGraw says. At that point, the duo was sometimes brewing up to 90 gallons of beer at a time in the McGraw garage. “We began to think we should do something with it, but we didn’t really take ourselves seriously,” he added.
That sense of humor has come in handy, even through the challenges of starting a business and keeping it going during the pandemic.
Kenny McGraw says that both couples bring something unique to the team. “Maybe it isn’t a well-oiled machine, but it certainly runs smoother now than it did in the first couple of years,” he says with a chuckle.
Five years after opening, A Few Old Goats is the only nano-brewery in Roanoke. While a nano-brewery can brew up to five barrels, A Few Old Goats brews only two. According to Kenny McGraw, this gives him more flexibility in brewing. “We can try stuff [like different flavors] and it’s not going to break us if it doesn’t work out.”
On a typical day A Few Old Goats might have twelve to sixteen taps flowing. That gives patrons a lot of variety to try new things. The brewery likes to have something on tap for everyone, according to Curtis Reed.
A lot of the beers they brew have clever names, bartender Warren Lambert says. Take, for example, the Velvet Selleck Imperial Lager they once served up. Before actually brewing the beer, Kenny McGraw and Curtis Reed had already named it Magnum PI. The name changed sometime between dreaming about it and brewing it. Now, that particular keg has been kicked, and a velvet portrait of Tom Selleck hangs on the wall.
Lambert explained that Swipe Right hard seltzer also has humorous beginnings. “They didn’t want to do seltzers so [the owners] say they finally swiped right on that one,” he says, referencing Tinder’s popular swiping motion.
Lambert has only been working at A Few Old Goats a few months, but he’s been a regular customer since he moved to Roanoke from Atlanta nearly five years ago. He says he was drawn to A Few Old Goats because it has such a neighborly atmosphere. “Some nights, 25% of the people walk here,” he says.
A lot of the guests are staying in the adjacent West End Flats, many of which have been turned into AirBNBs, Lambert says. Folks from around the country have stopped by the brewery in recent months, he says.
“I get to be a tour guide for recommending restaurants and things for people to do around here,” Lambert says, referencing guests who are visiting Roanoke to hike, mountain bike, or otherwise spend time outside.
It is obvious that folks are coming out to this West End brewery quite regularly. A typical visit might reveal a packed taproom and a hopping patio space. This weekend will likely be no different.
As for the name, Kenny McGraw says that no one quite remembers how that came about. “We were sitting in my basement, probably after bottling or kegging beer one day. We’d had way too much to drink. Somebody was feeling crabby and yelled, ‘You’re just an old goat,’ or something like that,” Kenny McGraw says.
Curtis Reed tells a similar version of the story. “I’ve always liked goats,” he says, explaining that he owned a baby goat named Pepper as a child. But that’s just a coincidence, Curtis Reed says. “We were homebrewing in the backyard one day. One of our wives shouted, ‘You’re just a bunch of old goats back there,” he says with a laugh.
The name stuck.
“We’re most proud that a couple of idiots from Cleveland were able to do this,” Kenny McGraw says.
A Few Old Goats Brewing is located at 515 8th Street, Suite 228 in Roanoke, VA. Drop in to their anniversary celebration between noon and 9 p.m. on Saturday, July 15. Find more information on A Few Old Goat’s Facebook page.