Carolina Brewery adds small-batch brews to selection

Carolina Brewery is a favorite for students and Chapel Hill residents alike — but to meet the growing upward trend in popularity and taste for craft beer, owner Robert Poitras is changing things up.

According to the North Carolina Brewers Guild, there were 12 breweries in the state when Carolina Brewery opened in 1995.

This number has grown steadily since then — there are currently 79 breweries in North Carolina, including two in Chapel Hill and two in Carrboro.

In addition to trademarks like Sky Blue Golden Ale and Flagship IPA, Poitras said he recently decided to let his brewers be more creative and work on a small-batch series of brews that can only be found at the Chapel Hill location.

The small-batch series will include brews that have been popular in the past, as well as experimental mixtures of flavors and ingredients, Poitras said. He said the older Franklin Street Lager will be back soon, as well as a black IPA.

“We don’t offer any domestic beers, and we never have,” Poitras said. “We’re going to get you hooked on craft beer.”

He said he thinks Chapel Hill is a place where craft beer is meant to thrive.

“Chapel Hill just always kind of had that yearning for cooler things, whether it’s music or food,” Poitras said. “The same thing goes for craft beer.”

Senior Jessie Franklin, who said he has visited many breweries in the area and in the state, enjoys tasting the unique seasonal and experimental brews local breweries come up with.

“Each of them has their own different flavor,” he said. “I want to go to places that have a really approachable atmosphere.”

Steel String Brewery is the first in downtown Carrboro and the newest in the area to enter the growing craft beer market.

Will Isley, Steel String’s Brew Czar and a co-owner, said he thinks people are slowly moving away from the more commonly recognized brands of beer.

“Everybody’s embraced the idea of enjoying a premium beer, something that’s a really specialized product instead of a mass produced, very bland, boring beer,” he said.

Poitras also said he has seen people from all walks of life enjoying craft beer at a much higher frequency.

“Craft beer is now hitting a very wide demographic,” Poitras said.

Poitras said the typical craft beer drinker 20 years ago was a 30- to 40-year old male, but now men and women anywhere from 21 to the upper 70s are enjoying craft beer all around the nation.

But Franklin said he thinks the brewery selections we have in the area have a lot of room to grow and reach out to an even wider customer base.

“I think we have a lot of really big competition in the other cities,” he said.

Other breweries in bigger cities are experimenting more with flavors and ingredients, Franklin said, and he said he would like to see the breweries in Chapel Hill and Carrboro experiment more and expand their market.

“Right now, we have a very small section, and they’re catering to a very specific Chapel Hill market,” Franklin said. “I wish they would branch out.”

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