By Nathan Ham
It has been a big year for Booneshine Brewing. The craft brewery moved their brewing operations to the former Highland International paint building at the industrial park off of Highway 421.
Booneshine along with other local businesses including Hatchet Coffee, Center 45 and Destination by Design have all dubbed this area as “East Boone.”
“We think this is the direction that the town almost has to grow. The town is going to be moving some of their offices out here, we’ve got the soccer fields right next to where we are, Rocky Knob mountain biking park, we feel great about this side of town. As it grows, we’re happy to be over here,” said Booneshine co-owner, Tim Herdklotz.
Currently, Booneshine still has its tasting room at Basil’s Fresh Pasta and Deli, however that will be changing soon as Booneshine expands their location to add a restaurant and deck along with their brewing operations. They will have about 3,500 square feet for the restaurant portion of that which they plan on starting construction on soon in the hopes of having it open by late spring of 2019.
The new location features a total of 9,000 square feet with about 4,500 of that being used for brewing space. Herdklotz says at the previous location next to Basil’s, they had about 1,200 square feet.
“We went from 60 barrels of fermentation space in the old brewery to another 150 barrels on top of that here. We’re super excited about that,” said Herdklotz.
Booneshine takes pride in being able to distribute their own beer and make connections with many restaurants in the area. While most of their customers are in the High Country, Herdklotz and co-owner Carson Coatney have recently started selling their tasty beers off the mountain. Booneshine products can be found in Lenoir, Morganton, Hickory, Winston-Salem and in the Raleigh-Durham area.
“We wanted to make sure we took really good care of the High Country, that’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re expanding here. We specifically waited until we had enough capacity to make sure we’re still taking really good care of our friends up here before we started selling off the mountain. So far it has been really well-received,” Herdklotz said. “We self-distribute all of our beer. We’re not just walking in and selling beer, we’re really trying to build relationships. We’ll walk into a restaurant and talk to them about what they’re trying to do as a business, do they have a strategy related to craft beer and we’ll sit down with them and consult with them on that. We hope Booneshine will be a part of that. We’re really trying to help them be successful because if they’re successful then we’re going to be successful as well.”
On Thursday, December 13, Booneshine will be releasing a special beer called Bubbleman Brute IPA in honor of Kinney Baughman, the pioneer of beer brewing in Western North Carolina. The release will be at 5 p.m. at Basil’s.
Baughman got started brewing in Boone at the Cottonwood Brewery that opened in 1993. At the time, only five other breweries existed in the state of North Carolina and Cottonwood was the only brewery in western North Carolina. Now there are over 400 breweries across the state.
“We owe a lot to Kinney as a pioneer of brewing here. It’s super cool to have that part of history here. This is the first time we’ve brewed together,” said Herdklotz.
Kinney’s love of quality beer dated back to 1978 when he spent a season playing basketball in Belgium.
When he returned to the United States, Baughman attended graduate school at the University of Georgia. While at UGA, he said that he would often read Mother Earth News because he missed being in the mountains. In one of those magazine issues, there was an advertisement for a home beer brewing kit and he decided to purchase one.
Baughman said his interest in brewing beer continued to grow even more at a home brewers conference in Cincinnati that he attended. The Internet was in its infant stages at this point, but Baughman, who is an Internet Programmer at Appalachian State, signed up for an email service from the Home Brewers Digest.
“Next thing you know, I’m in touch with the most cutting edge brewers in the country,” said Baughman.
As for the “Bubbleman” name that has followed him around over the recent years, Baughman, who is an avid runner, says that the bubble idea all started during the Hunter’s Heroes run from the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office to Blowing Rock.
“I was running that race one year and it was about six or seven miles in going past Tweetsie and all of a sudden these bubbles are coming down from everywhere at Mystery Hill. That’s where the whole thing started,” said Baughman.
Baughman’s first running event as Bubbleman was in The Bear, a race that is part of the Highland Games at Grandfather Mountain.
“I ran The Bear blowing bubbles the whole way and I could not believe how much people liked it,” he said.
Bubbleman’s most popular appearances are at the annual High Country Beer Fest in Boone.
“I’ve got the best job at beer fest. I walk around blowing bubbles with my bubble guns and everybody loves bubbles,” said Baughman.
Kinney is excited that Booneshine has decided to recognize his early brewing efforts with a special edition beer and allowed him to be a part of the brewing of the beer.
“It is an honor, I appreciate people that still remember I used to do this. We had been talking about doing this for two or three years,” Baughman said.
The special art on a poster for the Bubbleman Brute IPA as well as the can designs are done by local graphic artist Allison Langewisch who used to work at Stick Boy Bread, a business also owned by Booneshine co-owner Carson Coatney.
Looking ahead to the future, the crew at Booneshine is happy to be a part of the community and the place that both Tim and Carson have called home for many years.
“Carson and I were both home brewers to begin with. He and I were both looking to do something new. We got together and started doing home brewing together for a while and started kicking around different business models on how we could get started and here we are,” said Tim. “We just love this area. I’ve been back about 14 years now so we’re 100 percent committed to Boone and excited to grow our business here. We sold our first beer in July of 2015 and we’ve been expanding ever since. It’s been really neat to see how fast we’ve been able to grow.”
Booneshine has also put in a lot of effort working with the new Fermentation Sciences program at Appalachian State, a major that got its start in 2012.
“We’ve partnered closely with the Fermentation Sciences department at App State. We have students working for us full-time and part-time. With that partnership, it has allowed us to get some lab work done on our beers to focus on consistency. We have a pretty high bar on our quality standard and we’re really serious about it,” said Herdklotz.
For more information on Booneshine and all the beers they have to offer, visit their website at booneshine.beer.
Photos by Ken Ketchie
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