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Ardent Craft Ales: (l to r) Paul Karns, Kevin O’Leary and Tom Sullivan Photo by Jay Paul
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Lickinghole Creek Craft Brewery: (l to r) Farris Loutfi, head brewer David Achkio; owners Sean-Thomas and Lisa Pumphrey Photo by Jay Paul
Beer and Richmond go together like PBR and … well, five more PBRs. As Richmonders' beer bellies expand, so too do our palates. Luckily, desire equals DIY in Richmond. Countless ideas were born of boozy nights and hoppy test batches brewed in Lakeside and Church Hill garages.
Take Ardent Craft Ales, opening in 2014 in Scotts Addition, just a pub crawl away from beer wunderkind Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. Or farther afield, there's Lickinghole Creek Craft Brewery, which opened at the end of September, producing beers made from ingredients almost entirely sourced on site at their farm in Goochland County.
Whether IPA or Belgian, big ideas start small.
Local Beer Package
In The Beginning, there was homebrew. Sean-Thomas Pumphrey, owner, Lickinghole Creek Craft Brewery When I left Richmond, everyone was drinking Natural Light and ‘Beast.' I got back [to Richmond] in the early 2000s, and I was in the car business. [It's] an intense business — sometimes confrontational. I got into home brewing [six or seven years ago]. I started growing hops out here on the farm to supplement my beer making. Paul Karns, co-owner, Ardent Craft Ales I'd helped out brewing my first batches of beer 20 years ago in college. Tom [Sullivan, co-owner] and I had been home brewers off and on for years. Kevin [O'Leary, also a co-owner], in addition to being a home brewer, had been a professional brewer in Boston. It's really Kevin's experience that helped us move to the next level In order to make craft beer, you must first create the universe. Sean-Thomas Pumphrey Part of the reason it took us so long to get started … was a series of obstacles. The first was, how do you [create] a brewery on a farm in Goochland County? We had to rewrite the law. Our mantra is always "How hard can it be?" Paul Karns Three years ago, we bought the small [Sabco] pilot system that we have, which is the same system used by major breweries to try their new beers. About two years ago, we started working on a business plan. A year into it, we decided … we like where we're headed with this. Then we started looking at what scale would be OK for making a viable business out of it. ... And after a couple of beers, someone said, "Why not start a brewery?" Sean-Thomas Pumphrey The inevitable question at Mekong popped up one night … well, why not? This was a few years ago. I'd been taught to look for problems to solve at University of Richmond, where I'd gotten my MBA — this was one. There weren't a whole lot of craft breweries in Richmond at the time. There was Richbrau and Legend. Now they're everywhere. Paul Karns There was a point about a year before the whole thing got ticking when the idea started knocking around … when I was staring down being really unhappy at my job at the time. I wanted to create my own trajectory, and this is what I wanted it to be In order to make craft beer, you must first create the universe. Sean-Thomas Pumphrey Part of the reason it took us so long to get started … was a series of obstacles. The first was, how do you [create] a brewery on a farm in Goochland County? We had to rewrite the law. Our mantra is always "How hard can it be?" Paul Karns Three years ago, we bought the small [Sabco] pilot system that we have, which is the same system used by major breweries to try their new beers. About two years ago, we started working on a business plan. A year into it, we decided … we like where we're headed with this. Then we started looking at what scale would be OK for making a viable business out of it Anybody got a few hundred thousand bucks for beer money? Sean-Thomas Pumphrey The way that we [scaled up] was … to get a commitment from somebody for financing. I knew we were going to be opening — I got a commitment from a high-quality brewer. I could attract him as long as I had the financial backing. Paul Karns By brewing every Sunday out of our [Church Hill] garage and connecting with people and pouring beers every year at Tricycle Gardens' harvest dinners, we'd gotten in front of people. That really helped. We started pulling together some really great investment partners and some really solid advisors from legal and business standpoints. Richmond beers taste like … Richmond? Sean-Thomas Pumphrey Every time I make a beer — I always want to make a beer that I can't buy. We made the decision to come to the farm as a way to distinguish ourselves in a very crowded field. Our pumpkins are grown here on site. So are our barley, our hops, our berries. We really bring a terroir concept into Virginia brewing — a taste of the land. Paul Karns Honestly, the Richmond market is far from crowded as far as [microbreweries] go. Asheville is a third of our size and has 15 breweries. San Diego is pushing 100 breweries, and none of them are having any trouble at this point. I think [Richmond] is too young for a distinctive style. But as time goes on, the Virginia market is going to start looking more like the Virginia wine market
