914 Mall Loop Road
High Point, NC 27262
336-882-4677
E-mail: libertyhp@tbonz.com
Website: http://www.libertysteakhouseandbrewery.com
Hours: Daily, 11 A.M.–2 A.M.
Tours: Upon request
Owner: T-Bonz Restaurant Group
Brewmaster: Todd Isbell
Opened: 2002
Regular beer lineup: Rocket’s Red Ale, Nut Brown Ale, Miss Liberty Lager, Blackberry Wheat, India Pale Ale, Deep River Wheat, Patriot Porter, Oatmeal Stout
Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery is unique in North Carolina in that it is a stand-alone in a chain of restaurants. It is part of the T-Bonz chain, based in Charleston, South Carolina. Other Liberties—in the form of Liberty Tap Room & Grill locations—exist around South Carolina. The Myrtle Beach location is a brew-pub. T-Bonz also operates a full range of seafood restaurants and cafés in South Carolina. There is only one Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery. It is the sole member of the T-Bonz chain in North Carolina. The other thing that sets it apart is its location just outside High Point, “the Furniture Capital of the World.” It stands alongside a mall, where visitors might expect to see an Applebee’s, P. F. Chang’s, Chili’s, or other chain restaurant. Instead, at Liberty, they’re greeted with well-made craft beer.
Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery in High Point
Liberty’s first location—in Myrtle Beach—was opened by Josh Quigley in the mid-1990s in conjunction with T-Bonz. Quigley owned a homebrew shop in Charleston, and T-Bonz approached him about the possibility of starting a brewpub. The chain sent him to a short course in brewing at the University of California–Davis and shortly thereafter opened Liberty’s first location. Soon, in order to make beer for the other T-Bonz locations, it started another venture in South Carolina, a packaging brewery called New South Brewing.
In the meantime, T-Bonz was working on another Liberty, this one in High Point. Needing a brewer, it hired Eric Lamb, an experienced packaging brewer from Mendocino Brewing Company in Hopland, California. It was a quick change of pace for Lamb, who went from being a large plant packaging brewer to the sole person in a small brewery, creating his own recipes, managing his own procurement, and even helping out behind the bar when needed. Lamb’s work ethic and fantastic beer meant that when Josh Quigley left Liberty in Myrtle Beach to start his own brewpub, Quigley’s Pint and Plate, Lamb moved to Myrtle Beach to brew there, and a new brewer was brought on in High Point.
That new brewer didn’t work out and soon departed the High Point location, which left Lamb brewing at both places, making the long commute between High Point and Myrtle Beach on a regular basis until 2007, when Liberty found Todd Isbell.
Isbell had been around beer since he was a kid. His father worked for Miller Brewing Company in Fulton, New York, not as a brewer but as a production manager. Isbell remembers spending time around the brewery as a child.
He learned about beer while hanging out with his brother in high school. They had a ritual. Each weekend, they would pick up a six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best and a six-pack of something they had never heard of—an import, a microbrew, something that looked unique. “So, very quickly,” he says, “I was able to learn that beer isn’t what the Big Three tell you it is.”
Patrons enjoy the bar at Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery.
The brewhouse at Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery
Isbell learned how to homebrew while he was in college. After that, he went into the army and was stationed in Germany, where his beer education really began. “I was able to learn all about German beer and to see how ingrained into society it was,” he says. When he left the army and moved back to the United States, he started homebrewing again. In addition to holding a regular engineering job, he volunteered at Empire Brewing in Syracuse, New York.
“It wasn’t much,” he says, “just a couple of evenings a week and maybe a weekend day every week.” He did that for close to a year and fell in love with it. “I had one of those epiphanies that I guess a lot of people don’t ever have, where I realized that money isn’t everything and that you have to do what you love.”
He immediately started saving up and put himself through UC-Da-vis’s Master of Brewing program, graduating in 2004. He received job offers afterward, but not many he was interested in. “I couldn’t just take an entry-level bottling line position or anything,” he says. “I still had bills to pay. I had all of these student loans from my first run at college.”
His brother lived in Colorado. Knowing that many breweries were located there, Isbell moved. Two weeks later, he got a job at Rock Bottom in Westminster, Colorado. The next two to three years saw Isbell moving through a variety of part-time positions at breweries around Colorado, including Ironwork Brewery. “They never really had a consistent lineup of beers, so I got to play around with recipes a lot,” he remembers. “Fear of failure wasn’t really present.”
In 2007, longing to get back to the East Coast, he saw an advertisement for an open position at Liberty. He did a working interview alongside Lamb, took a look at the area, tried beer from the local breweries, and was sold on the job. By the end of the year, Isbell was brewmaster at Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery.
Like his position at Ironwork, he has the ability to play around in the brewhouse. The Liberty locations in Myrtle Beach and High Point have the same names for many of their beers, but the recipes are those of the individual brewmasters.
Isbell has won dozens of medals at local professional brewing competitions in his few short years at Liberty. He has seen nothing but growth there. “We’re officially undersized,” he says proudly. “We can’t make any more beer with the equipment that I have.”
The pub part of Liberty Steakhouse & Brewery reflects its mall location, with its tiled floors and conservative black design. But nothing can take away from the gleaming beauty of the copper brewhouse attached to the side of the pub. Floor-to-ceiling windows let natural light flood the brewery, and sunlight glints off the fermenters and into the rest of the restaurant.
The North Carolina Brewers Guild is a not-for-profit 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization comprised of brewers, vendors, retailers, and craft beer enthusiasts focused on promoting North Carolina beer and breweries.
The guild had its start in 2008, when founding members Jamie Bartholomaus of Foothills Brewing, David Gonzalez of Rock Bottom Brewery (now Foothills), Paul Philippon of The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, John Lyda of Highland Brewing Company, and Sebastian Wolfrum of Natty Greene’s Pub & Brewing Co. rallied brewers and brewery owners from around the state to a common mission of promoting North Carolina beer, cooperating on purchasing, exchanging knowledge and support among members, and backing—or fighting—legislative initiatives in the common interest of the state’s breweries.
In addition, the guild supports and is supported by retail members (bottle shops, bars, and restaurants) and affiliate members (suppliers, vendors, and service providers for the craft brewing industry). It has created an “Enthusiast Program” for North Carolina craft beer fans. Joining the guild as an individual member gets the enthusiast a T-shirt, stickers, and a membership card that entitles him or her to perks at breweries, bars, and restaurants around the state, as well as entrance to special educational events hosted by the guild.
For information, a constantly updated list of North Carolina breweries and their events, and all the latest North Carolina beer news, visit the guild’s website at ncbeer.org.
