140 Thomas Mill Road
Holly Springs, NC 27540
919-557-BEER (2337)
E-mail: carolinabrewing@aol.com
Website: http://www.carolinabrew.com
Hours: Friday, noon–6 P.M.; Saturday, noon–4 P.M.
Tours: Saturday at 1 P.M.
Owners: Joe Zonin, Greg Shuck, Van Smith, and Mark Heath
Brewmaster: Greg Shuck
Opened: 1995
Regular beer lineup: Carolina Pale Ale, Carolina Nut Brown Ale, Carolina India Pale
Seasonals: Carolina Spring Bock, Carolina Summer Wheat, Carolina Oktoberfest Lager, Carolina Winter Porter, anniversary beers, Groundhog Day beers, holiday beers
When Joe Zonin, Greg Shuck, and John Shuck moved to North Carolina, they did so to start a brewery. The friends met at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and moved to the Pacific Northwest together. Once there, they fell in love with brewing culture and small craft breweries and decided they wanted to start their own. Feeling the Pacific Northwest was too crowded for another brewery, they looked elsewhere and finally settled on North Carolina.
Art and plaques decorate the wall in the entryway of Carolina Brewing Company.
“When we moved here from Seattle in 1993, there were 12 breweries in downtown Seattle. There were two in the state of North Carolina,” says Joe Zonin.
The friends didn’t want to just found a brewery, though. They wanted to do it right. They visited over 100 breweries and took ideas from all of them. And unlike most other breweries in North Carolina at the time, theirs started with all new equipment, including kegs.
They opened their doors and made their first sale on July 3, 1995, to the 42nd St. Oyster Bar in downtown Raleigh, a spot they return to annually for a full beer dinner to celebrate another successful year in business. In 1997, they added their bottling line. “We bought a bottling line that was too big for us, and in a few years when we hit 20 years old and we’ve increased production, it’ll still be too big for us,” Zonin says with a laugh. That has meant they’ve put very little wear and tear on their equipment. On a bottling line that is almost 15 years old, they still see less than a 1 percent loss rate, something most bottling breweries can only dream of.
Despite such a long time in business, Carolina Brewing Company is committed to being a local brewery and a local business. “When we started, we were in three counties,” says Zonin, “and today, 16 years later, we’re in eight.” The partners don’t have plans for wide growth. “We might try to add on a few areas occasionally,” Zonin says, “but we like to sit back and enjoy it. We’re not stressed out trying to grow. We’re enjoying ourselves.”
Being one of the longest-operating breweries in the state has given the partners the chance to see a large part of the brewing industry grow up around them. “It’s fun,” says Zonin. “We like the competition. We originally felt like we were competing against British imports. Now, we’ve got all this other small craft. It’s great. The consumer is more interested. It’s good for everyone. And we’ve been thrilled to see that we’ve actually grown over the past five years, even with all of these breweries opening up.”
One of the things Carolina Brewing Company is known for around the state is its iconic logo. “We wanted to use an animal, from lions to tigers to bears,” says Zonin. “We considered local animals—dogs, cats, turtles, whatever. We even considered Accidental Yak Brewing Company for a while, but we felt like that had too many bad connotations. We settled on a lion because it’s regal and aggressive.” The company’s original logo had a lion emerging from an eggshell resting on a bed of hops and barley, signifying the birth of the brewery.
Carolina Brewing Company’s front entrance leads patrons into a small, informal bar with no taps, a wall full of T-shirts, plaques the brewery has earned from its long commitment to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and a picture of beer being drunk from the Stanley Cup. “That’s Carolina Pale Ale!” says Zonin, a huge hockey fan. For him, seeing CPA drunk from the Stanley Cup after the Carolina Hurricanes’ victory in 2006 was one of the highlights of 16 years of operation.
Past the door adjoining the bar, patrons walk into a full-production brewery. The bottling line looms to the left, large 40- and 80-barrel fermenters stand in a row, and every available space is filled with kegs, bottles, packaging, and ingredients. The 20-barrel brewhouse—the same one the partners have been brewing in since they opened—is at the far left of the brewery, opposite the cold room and the informal tasting area, a small, three-sided bar that stands in front of the taps sticking out of the side of the cold room.
One of the other things the brewery is known for is its weekly tour, conducted every Saturday at 1 P.M. for the past 15 years. During the tour, that informal tasting area is filled with eager patrons. “I do about 95 percent of the tours,” says Zonin. “We try to walk the line between fun and technical without being too boring.” On average, Carolina Brewing Company hosts between 75 and 100 people on the tour. But on busy days, it can see as many as 250 to 300. “It probably helps that we pour 16-ounce samples for people,” jokes Zonin. The tours have helped the brewery build and maintain its fan base in the diverse and growing North Carolina craft beer scene.
A view of the brewhouse and fermenters at Carolina Brewing Company