Start planning your ultimate South Carolina adventure with a free copy of the 2024 Vacation Guide. Request your free copy, view the guide online or download a PDF version below.
Abundance of Craft Breweries Turns Charleston into the New Beer City
Bob Gillespie
Bob is a former sports writer at Columbia’s The State newspaper. He enjoys golf at South Carolina’s 350-plus courses, and after a round, sampling craft beers from the Palmetto State’s breweries.
Pouring from test taps at Edmunds Oast in Charleston.
With its rich antebellum history, architecturally distinctive buildings, famed restaurants and beautiful coastal setting, it's no wonder Charleston has been voted No. 1 city in the world.
Now, South Carolina's "Holy City" is gaining renown for - of all things - craft beer.
Asheville, NC, likes to call itself "Beer City, USA" with its 39 local breweries - but Charleston is closing the gap with 27 area breweries and three more on the horizon. That's nearly half the craft breweries in South Carolina.
Why Charleston? Brewers give credit to changes in state brewing laws in 2011 and 2014. And visitors want to eat and drink local. They know Charleston's reputation for food; now, they're learning the beer.
In each of the city's districts - North Charleston, West Ashley/James Island/Johns Island, Mount Pleasant and Historic Downtown - you'll find welcoming taprooms, as well as canned/bottled beers at some stops. For a complete list of brew sites, visit www.satisfyyourthirstsc.com.
Here's a sampling of what Charleston has to offer:
North Charleston
When you pop a can of Pluff Mud, you’ll get a whiff of great Charleston beer.
Former home brewers Brian Bogstad and Ben Mayer opened Rusty Bull Brewing Co. at 3005 W. Montague Ave. on St. Patrick's Day in 2017, envisioning a neighborhood taproom. "But now we draw from all over town," Bogstad said. "We've become a destination brewery."
The bright, airy interior, with brewing equipment visible from the bar and sitting areas, is in contrast with darker taprooms. Patrons enjoy a rotating lineup of 14 beers, led by favorites Berry Stomp (wheat ale with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries), Hop Bottom Girl (a 6.5 ABV IPA), Tumbling Monk Porter (chocolate, coffee and pistachio), Free The Trippel (smooth Belgian ale) and Dance Naked (a very hoppy IPA).
Holy City, at 1021 Aragon Ave., is one of Charleston's largest breweries. A seamless extension of the brewery, Holy City's taproom offers a diverse taplist, a full in-house food menu and a lineup of live music, attracting a summer crowd in T-shirts and shorts.
Pluff Mud Porter is Holy City's biggest retail seller but the taproom favorite is Washout Wheat, a hefeweizen. The brewery creates 65-80 beer styles each year, with 10 beers in regular rotation. Flight favorites also include Shipwreck saison, a pilsner, a rum barrel-aged coconut and the potent Aspen Cowboy (8.9 ABV).
The finished product, a pint of Charlestons Frothy Beard beer.
Frothy Beard, 1401 Sam Rittenberg Blvd., started small around 2010 with a 1½-barrel brewhouse and a taproom focus, but today is the 10th-largest SC brewery (No. 5 in Charleston) with a 10-barrel operation and product available across the state.
The spacious taproom - a former church - offers a lineup that includes Hominy Cream Ale, Holy Water (saison), It's Cucumber Thyme Wheat!, Sip Sip Pass (6.8 ABV IPA) and its two distributed beers, Tides Irish Red and !Andale! Pale, featuring jalapeno peppers for a "nice burn in the back of your throat."
Charles Towne Fermentory, at 809 Savannah Highway in West Ashley's Avondale District, has a small but comfortable, wood-paneled taproom and a locals/family feel with foosball tables. The name comes from "our focus on fermentation and profiles in beer, including wild beers," said taproom manager Justin Slotnick, who followed owner Adam Goodwin south from Boston. Favorite beers on tap include Ralf Zwickelbeer (German lager), Mudlark Nitro Dry Stout and Mars Express (pale ale). The Fermentory rotates one beer weekly in cans.
Four pounds of hops go into every barrel of Edmund Oast’s Viridi Rex.
If you like walking, you can visit eight breweries in a 2½-mile stretch of "The Neck," a narrow industrial-area on the Charleston peninsula. Brewers dub it the Charleston Brewery District because of its variety of beer styles and taprooms.
The district's central destination is Edmund's Oast, featuring two locations: Edmund's Oast Restaurant, 1081 Morrison Drive, a combination taproom and restaurant; and Edmund's Oast Brewing Co., 1505 King St., a traditional taproom with bar, pub food and brewing tanks behind glass.
Owner Scott Shor had been operating the Charleston Beer Exchange, selling an array of other brewers' craft beers, when he opened his restaurant in 2014. "Our goal was to offer our own beers, along with great food, cocktails - all things that we loved," he said.
Later, as Edmund's Oast's own beers grew in popularity, Shor opened the King Street site. Both operations are "beer-centric," but the restaurant aspires to fine dining while EOBC is more on the casual side - sports on TV, food trucks, live music and even a monthly drag show, Divas On Tap. Both locations serve Edmund's Oast beers, including sours, wild beers and the popular Something Cold blonde ale, an "entry-level" craft beer for more traditional macro-beer drinkers.
Nearby, Munkle Brewing at 1513 Meeting St. specializes in Belgian-style beers. Owner Palmer Quimby named his establishment, in part for an uncle who was once a monk, and serves such brews as Gully Washer Wit (wheat beer) and Pout House Pale Ale in 14-ounce thistle-shaped glasses.
Westbrook Brewing's Mexican Cake is one of S.C.'s top beers. Photo courtesy Westbrook Brewing.
Two Blokes Brewing, the smallest brewery footprint in town at 547 Long Point Road, Suite 101, is the only brewery in Charleston open seven days a week - and the only one with an Australian owner, Matty Symons.
The darkish taproom has a variety of entertainments, from darts for the adults to a kids corner, because Symons wants his place to have an English/Irish pub feel, where the pub is the center of the community. Live music and visiting food trucks are offered weekly to complement a dozen beers on tap, notably Publican (English-style pub ale), Wicked Throat Chamah (New England IPA), Spilt Milk (milk stout) and Throat Charmer (double IPA, 8.0 ABV).
Bob is a former sports writer at Columbia’s The State newspaper. He enjoys golf at South Carolina’s 350-plus courses, and after a round, sampling craft beers from the Palmetto State’s breweries.
