1 of 6
Located off Chamberlayne Avenue near Battery Park, Tabol Brewing is North Side's first craft brewery.
2 of 6
The majority of beers at Tabol will be brewed using foeders.
3 of 6
Tabol Brewing is filled with barrels in which the beers age and develop more complex flavors.
4 of 6
Tabol's brewers employ small-scale experimentation with foraged yeast.
5 of 6
Travis Dise (left) and Nic Caudle are the founders of Tabol Brewing.
6 of 6
Caudle's shirt pokes fun at the rising number of breweries in the area.
Tabol (pronounced "table") Brewing, North Side’s first small-batch brewery, will bring the funk when it opens in the coming weeks at 704 Dawn St. off Chamberlayne Avenue. The owners are aiming for a late-September/early October debut.
When you take a look around the brewery, things may appear a little different: Instead of the massive stainless-steel vats present in many area breweries, Tabol is filled with wooden barrels, puncheons and foeders.
“We’re treating the wood as the vessel,” says co-founder Nic Caudle, sporting a Tabol shirt that reads, "Another Brewery Nobody Asked For."
“We were joking that all the breweries have to trademark [names] because eventually there would be nothing left,” he says with a smile.
Hence the name Tabol, a homophone for an inanimate object and a good-natured poke at themselves and the booming craft beer movement that is sweeping the city. But Tabol does possess an edge, a funky core that the founders hope sets them apart.
Their focus: wild sour ales. Rustic, refreshing and tart. Lighter, more elegant, yet complex flavors that the oaky barrels aid in bringing to life. Some are acidic, some not so much. Some fruity, others reminiscent of wine with earthy, oak-vat aromas. Saisons, ales and sours are at the forefront of styles beer enthusiasts can expect from the newest brewery on the RVA beer scene.
Time is also of the essence at Tabol — some of their beers have been aging and fermenting for three to four weeks, some three to six months and others more than a year.
“I said, 'Screw the stainless, we're putting everything into barrels,' ” says Caudle, who’s been home brewing for the last 15 years. “What’ll be our main focus is what all the other breweries tend to do as side projects.”
Wild, specifically local, yeast strains play an important role in producing the types of sour-style beers Tabol hopes to achieve. Instead of purchasing yeast from labs, Tabol captures and forages honeysuckle, tree bark, berries and other natural items from friends’ gardens as well as their own.
In the 3,000-square-foot brewery a back room appears to be occupied by a mad scientist. Beakers of various sizes contain yeast and wort, experiments in flavor profiles. One beaker is marked with a strip of blue duct tape that reads “Lenny & Karl.”
“We’ll let the yeast and microbes tell us how its growing; we just try to help guide it,” says Caudle about the process.
The space is the former home of Research Glass, a 25-year-old scientific glass company focused on making beakers and cylinders, some of which were left behind to become handy tools for the former home brewers as they transition to a full-fledged craft brewery.
“To me, it’s almost getting back to how beer used to be,” says Caudle's co-founder and fellow home brewer, Travis Dise.
“Before [people] discovered yeast, they didn’t know what caused that fermentation, but they liked the certain flavors that it provided, and up until then, every sour [beer] went sour because they didn’t know better,” Dise explains.
The brewing duo's relationship also began spontaneously: Avid D.C. United soccer fans, they found themselves flocking to Gus’s Bar & Grill and Penny Lane Pub to watch televised games. A passion for beer and the desire to be their own bosses led them to collaborate on Tabol, just as the beer-drinking public has begun looking beyond bitter, heavy-hopped IPAs and embracing lighter, more sessionable and tart brews.
Only a few years ago, fans of a pucker were hard-pressed to find a wide variety of sour-style beers in Virginia; today there are several breweries exploring that flavor profile in Richmond alone, including Vasen, The Veil and Strangeways.
The majority of Tabol’s beers, coincidentally, will be “table beers” — those with a lower ABV, typically around 4 or 5 percent, which will typically be available on site only.
“We don’t want our stuff to be on shelves at local stores; that’s not our focus,” says Dise. “It’s a really crowded space at this point.”
Tabol does plan to dabble in small-scale distribution and bottle their brews, and possibly work with a restaurant or bar to offer their beers on tap.
Tabol Brewing plans to open its tasting room Wednesday through Friday from 4 to 9 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m.
