The story below is from our May/June 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
The region’s artisanal drink scene features handcrafted spirits, beers and more.
Virginia is for lovers, and Southwest Virginia is for craft spirit lovers.
Roanoke itself is home to half a dozen breweries and a distillery. If you look at greater Roanoke, the Cheers Trail (which extends beyond Roanoke into Blacksburg to the south and Natural Bridge to the north) includes three distilleries, 11 wineries and vineyards and a whopping 17 craft breweries, meaning experiencing them all (safely at least) would take at least several days!
While the craft beer boom means you probably have a brewery or brewpub in your part of the county or city to try locally distilled craft spirits, there’s only one destination in Roanoke. Brady’s Distillery has become a favorite spot for lovers of these local libations who’ve been waiting over a century for their sip.
Brady’s is the creation of local brothers Tim, Brian and Andy Brady. When eldest brother Tim returned home to Roanoke after a long career in the military, the three knew they wanted to start a business together.
Anthony Giorgetti
Tim, Andy and Brian around a barrel.
“I always tell people we’re three brothers, and of course, we always get along and never fight,” Andy jokes.
Tim had thought about starting a brewery. “He makes amazing beer,” Andy says, but since Roanoke already had a few, they decided to go in a different direction. “Allegedly, Brian and I had been distilling for quite a few years.”
“When we started distilling, we kept saying, there’s no distillery in Roanoke. This would be a cool thing to do,” says Brian. “Every year we said ‘someone’s going to open one.’”
When they first applied for their distillery license, they were surprised to find no one had beaten them to it. They also discovered that Roanoke’s last one, Atlantic Coast Distilling, was located only a mile (and 109 years) down the street!
In these pre-prohibition days, as neighboring states went dry, Virginia was a haven for legal distilleries. During prohibition, a few years later, nearby Franklin County was “the wettest county in the world” because of its less-than-legal distilleries, as chronicled in the film “Lawless.”
Unlike the Bondurant brothers in Lawless, the Bradys did everything on the up and up. But they still have nods to the region’s prohibition past at Brady’s, from the names of their spirits (like Accomplice Gin) to the look and feel of their tasting room.
Stepping in with no context, you might mistake it for a Prohibition speakeasy of Roanoke past with the rustic wood and barrels used as tables, were it not for Brady’s shirts on the wall and bottles prominently displayed on the shelves, which would have caused a problem for latter day bootleggers who needed to quickly put up a facade of a respectable establishment.
Anthony Giorgetti
Brady’s proudly displays its distillations — a privilege unavailable to speakeasies’ past.
Since Brady’s doesn’t have to worry about getting their still busted, it’s become a local spot for many local events, from a comedy night hosted by local comedian and Roanoker photographer Taylor Reschka to mixers and bachelor, bachelorette and birthday parties where the bartenders have a chance to express their creativity through bespoke cocktails.
But for the Bradys themselves, straight bourbon is often the drink of choice.
Bourbon is, by federal law, the American spirit. Mexico has tequila. Scotland has Scotch. The U.S. has bourbon.
As such, it’s also our most regulated alcohol product, a fact that is both a positive and a negative. Bourbon must be at least 51% corn, made in the U.S. and aged in a brand-new, never-used American charred oak barrel.
When “you see bourbon, you know what you’re getting,” Andy says, which is a good thing for consumers, but it gets complicated “when you’re trying to be creative.”
As the head distiller, Tim handles the labeling and approval procedure, which can be complex. The federal government has a few goals, as he explains it.
“How transparent is what you’re trying to do to the consumer? …They want to make sure not only are we not misleading them, but they’re putting something in their body that’s not going to kill them."
While regulations matter, it slows the release procedure, as has been the case for a coffee-infused whiskey the brothers first started bottling before they opened but is still unavailable to the public.
If you were to taste it, you might describe it as coffee bourbon, but that’s technically incorrect.
As soon as you put coffee in it, it’s not bourbon.
As Brian explains, “All bourbon is whiskey. Not all whiskey is bourbon.”
The coffee flavor is different enough to regulators that they’re still trying to get the label approved.
Any of the Bradys can tell you quite a bit about the ins and outs of the taste, bottling, rules and history of bourbon and other liquor. If you’re lucky enough to meet one when they’re not busy (which is less common since they officially opened the tasting room in 2022), they may walk you through a tasting.
Anthony Giorgetti
A Brady’s tasting moves from lightest to darkest flavor tones.
There you can taste their vodka, gin, rum, bourbon and other spirits in small samples while they explain what you’re tasting and why it tastes that way. It brings a whole new level of appreciation to the drinker and has led more than one person who “doesn’t like bourbon” to change their tune.
Roanoke may not be the wettest county (or city) in the country, but it ain’t dry, either! And all those breweries that the Bradys didn’t want to compete with have become partners on the craft libation scene.
Used barrels are worth more than the sum of their parts, and the Bradys have shared theirs to add new flavors to local beers at every brewery in Roanoke.
“Since the first barrel we loaned out, there’s been no less than four or five hundred gallons of beer resting in our barrels,” Brian says.
If you started the Cheers Trail at Brady’s and then traveled down the road, you wouldn’t have trouble tasting the bourbon in the notes of toasted oak in One Ping Only, the Russian Imperial Stout at Twisted Track Brewpub on Shenandoah. It’s one of more than a dozen beers they have on tap, along with Virginia wine, kombucha and cider. As a dark beer, it would come last in a tasting after any lagers and New England or West Coast IPAs.
Courtesy of Twisted Track Brewpub
Williams Landry stands behind the bar at Twisted Track, waiting to please patrons’ beer requests.
William Landry opened Twisted Track in 2020. He’d spent his summers in England with his grandmother where he gained an “appreciation for the town coming together at a pub, talking and sharing drinks.”
Unlike those UK establishments, Twisted Track is more well-lit and open (it utilizes the garage doors of a previous tenant). But like them, it’s become as known for delicious food as its beverages.
“We’d sort of envisioned ourselves as a brewery that just happened to sell food and we become much more of a restaurant that just happens to make our own beer.”
Anthony Giorgetti
A family affair: Brian Summerson stands beside his daughter , Erin, at Big Lick Brewing.
Though it wasn’t the plan, they’ve embraced it.
The brewpub license allows him to sell other alcoholic beverages like wine, cider, kombucha or even other beers if he so chooses. Though he hasn’t served beers outside of his own, Landry loves being part of the craft beer ecosystem and says the other breweries in the area have been extremely welcoming.
“There’s a lot of good people and we’ve all done our part to grow the craft beer industry in Roanoke.”
One unique thing about Roanoke’s craft beer scene is that nearly every brewer started in the local craft beer home brewer’s club.
When he was a teacher in Roanoke schools, Bryan Summerson of Big Lick Brewing joined another friend at a home brewing club meeting. “I got infatuated and started home brewing.”
The habit grew. As Summerson won competitions and shared his creations with friends, they encouraged him to sell them. Additional encouragement came from his wife, who got tired of him spending money on his hobby and told him to “start making money or else.”
Though they started with the ethos “we never brew the same beer twice,” as distributors started selling their products, they had to keep a few favorites consistently available: two lagers, a couple of IPAs and a sour. Their number one seller is Smith Mountain Lager (SML).
Anthony Giorgetti
That hasn’t slowed their experimentation, though, as evidenced in their collaboration with Hotel Roanoke and Blue Ridge PBS, Heritage Pre-Prohibition Lager. It’s both sweeter and more bitter than SML or the modern lagers you’re probably used to.
Big Lick also partners with Brady’s (they’re currently brewing a barley wine in one of their bourbon barrels — yes, they’re a winery too) as well as local restaurants. They allow customers to order from Beamer’s and Tuco’s Taqueria from their tables, where they can also consume the food.
Sean Turk of Olde Salem Brewing Co. agrees that that’s a good strategy, and his customers can scan QR codes to make orders from local restaurants who deliver the food right to their tables at both of his locations, the original on Main Street in Salem and the downtown Roanoke branch on Market Street, where Deschutes briefly had their tasting room.
Anthony Giorgetti
Turk was able to buy all Deschute’s old equipment. “It was a good opportunity… and we were excited to have Salem represented in a named way in Downtown Roanoke, which I don’t think has ever been done before. “
That Salem address means a lot to Turk. His father spent his whole life working as finance director for the City of Salem. “He retired at City Hall, which is one block behind our building which made it super special for me to try to make my career a block from where my dad did. Every day I leave the parking lot, I look up and see his window.”
Turk can’t pick a favorite beer because every one of them has “a little piece of somebody in them…I have personal, emotional and all kind of connections to all the beers,” like Queen of California which was named after his wife’s grandmother who lived out there. It’s also, like all his beers, named after a song, this particular one by John Mayer.
People love the touch of the personal, the different flavors and the personalities of local beers and spirits and local businesses in general. Whether you want a light beer, a heritage lager, strong liquor, something experimental, or a cocktail, Roanoke is full of local and original choices.
With so many, you can surely find the one that’s perfect for your taste and atmosphere palette.
Cheers!
The story above is from our May/June 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!