On the Blue Ridge
On the Blue Ridge features conversations with people shaping the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hosted by Asheville-based journalist Jon Page, the show explores the ideas, creativity, and vision driving Western North Carolina forward.
Through long-form interviews and on-location storytelling, each episode captures the evolving story of these mountains. The conversations focus on people doing meaningful and inspiring work across the region, from conservation and outdoor recreation to the arts, agriculture, food and beverage, entrepreneurship, and beyond.
On the Blue Ridge
Chris and Jessica Whaley on Building Back Whaley Farm Brewery
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Chris and Jessica Whaley are the owners of Old Fort, North Carolina-based Whaley Farm Brewery, where Appalachian-inspired beers, local ingredients, and a resilient community helped shape the brewery’s long road to recovery after Hurricane Helene.
After many years of farming and brewing in Western North Carolina, the Whaleys opened their brewery in 2022 and specialize in Appalachian farm beers, English cask ales, and thoughtfully crafted lagers.
Jess is a farmer who grows produce, herbs, and flowers, many of which find their way into the beers. The Whaleys also source additional ingredients, including fruit and all of their malt from local suppliers.
Chris is a studious brewer who loves classic styles, while Jess often nudges him toward experimentation. Together, they’ve built a tap list where traditional English bitters, cream ales, and pilsners coexist alongside beers featuring locally grown herbs, flowers, peaches, and even foraged mushrooms. The common thread is balance, drinkability, a disregard for flashy trends, and a strong sense of place.
By late summer of 2024, the brewery had become a gathering place for locals and visitors alike. Then Hurricane Helene arrived.
The brewery, which sits alongside Mill Creek, took on roughly three feet of water during Helene. When the floodwaters receded, they left behind about a foot of mud. While the taproom’s foundation remained intact, the concrete slab beneath the brewery had to be torn out and replaced. Recovery stretched on for months. When Whaley Farm Brewery reopened in June of 2025, the brewhouse was still under construction, and Chris was essentially brewing on a homebrew-scale system inside the taproom just to keep beer flowing. It wasn’t until February of this year that brewing operations finally returned to normal.
In this episode, Chris and Jess share their memories of Helene and the long road to reopening; the acts of kindness that sustained them during the recovery; how farming and brewing intersect at Whaley Farm Brewery; and what gives them hope for the future of Old Fort and Western North Carolina.
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You can't contrive like the community that creates a space. It's like we can set the table, but the people that come and eat or drink in this instance are like the most special and most like crucial part of of what goes on here at the brewery.
SPEAKER_00I don't know that we could have done it without them, and they are certainly the reason we chose to reopen. Um I although I don't know that it was ever on the table that we wouldn't.
SPEAKER_01Today, on the Blue Ridge, our guests are Chris and Jessica Whaley, the owners of Old Fort-based Whaley Farm Brewery, where Appalachian-inspired beers, local ingredients, and a resilient community helped shape the brewery's long road to recovery after Hurricane Helene. I'm your host, John Page. Let's begin. After many years of farming and brewing in western North Carolina, the Whales opened their brewery in 2022 and specialize in Appalachian farm beers, English cascales, and thoughtfully crafted lagers. Jess is a farmer who grows produce, herbs, and flowers, many of which find their way into the beers. The Whales also source additional ingredients, including fruit and all of their malt, from local suppliers. Chris is a studious brewer who loves classic styles, while Jess often nudges him towards experimentation. Together they've built a tap list where traditional English bitters, creme alees, and pilsners coexist alongside beers featuring locally grown herbs, flowers, peaches, and even foraged mushrooms. The common thread is balance, drinkability, a disregard for flashy trends, and a strong sense of place. The tap room is a warm, welcoming space that also features plenty of outdoor seating. You're likely to find locals chatting over a cream mail, families playing board games, and travelers passing through town. The friendly vibes and the quality of the beer makes it the kind of place I wish I could walk to from my house. In fact, when I first interviewed the Whaleys in early September of 2024, it was that sense of place that was a big part of our conversation. I was looking forward to making it one of the first episodes of this podcast. But just a few weeks later, Hurricane Helene arrived and changed everyone's plans. The brewery, which sits alongside Mill Creek, took on roughly three feet of water. When the floodwaters receded, they left behind about a foot of mud. While the taprooms foundation remained intact, the concrete slab beneath the brewery had to be torn out and replaced. Recovery stretched on for months. And when Whaley Farm Brewery reopened in June of 2025, the brewhouse was still under construction, and Chris was essentially brewing on a homebrew scale system inside the tap room just to keep beer flowing. It wasn't until February of this year that brewing operations finally returned to normal. In this episode, Chris and Jess share their memories of Helene and the long road to reopening, the acts of kindness that sustained them during the recovery, how farming and brewing intersect at Whaley Farm Brewery, and what gives them hope for the future of Old Fort and Western North Carolina. I interviewed Chris and Jess in their tasting room in early June, just a few days before the first anniversary of their reopening. We were also joined by their adorable four-month-old son, Jasper, who opted to skip his morning nap and occasionally weigh in on the conversation. To kick things off, I asked Chris and Jess to reflect on what it meant to reopen last year. I feel like we reopened.
SPEAKER_03We reopened kind of how we opened, which was quietly. Um we had sort of a like a friends and family event to sort of knock the knock the dust off, and that was like super well attended, and um it was great to get the feeling, the community coming back together, because you know it's sort of like our space to see everyone in town. You see so-and-so here and there, but getting everybody together and being able to pour beer again was awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, and when we did finally reopen, we had quite a turnout, which was really awesome to see. I think people were champing at the bit a little bit to get back to drinking uh Chris's beer. So that was a really positive experience to have that support just outright.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So were there um, you know, were there people like standing at the windows like w waiting on you, like dropping around like when are you gonna open?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean that was you know, town was so like shut off for the longest time, like there wasn't a whole lot of tourism coming through, so it wasn't necessarily folks like banging down the door, but just sort of start the you know, through the grapevine, be letting people know, like, hey, you know, block off this day, or you know, what are you doing? I can't remember what day we opened. It was a Friday.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What are you doing, what are you doing on Friday or Thursday night for this this little soft opening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we definitely had people coming through to uh offer help constantly, which was felt a little bit overwhelming, but really, really awesome. I think it speaks a lot to our community here that um yeah, I think we I don't know that we could have done it without them, and they are certainly the reason we chose to reopen. Um I although I don't know that it was ever on the table that we wouldn't. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I I'm I mean I'm really curious about that. And especially like the first time you show up here after the storm, and you know, what what do you see, what's going through your mind, and and you're saying that even at that point, like the idea of of not reopening is not entering your mind?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, we couldn't see how bad the damage was under a foot of mud. So until and I guess from the beginning we had to like climb out of the valley we live in, and then hitch a ride with one of our neighbors who's a regular, and then we came in with another neighbor to sort of assess everything, and then all of a sudden people just started like showing up and grabbing shovels and pushing mud out. But um I think if we had seen how bad the damage was, it probably would have been not more of a question, but like, huh, wow, we have a long puzzle to piece together um with the the production area just being totally destroyed with the the slab itself. Equipment uh handled pretty well, but um yeah, the the slab being destroyed was a weird puzzle to to work through once we figured that out.
SPEAKER_01But so what what do you mean by that, by the slab being destroyed?
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Yeah, so the since we're like right on Mill Creek, um the waters came up a little over three feet in the in the building, and so that turbulence had undercut uh our 2,000 feet of production space, which was a thick concrete slab, but it undercut it and then it had sort of bucked up the concrete, just split and cracked all throughout, but bucked up two feet here, down two feet there. Um all of our tanks were filled because I had broken five ribs like a month before. And so I was like kegging one keg at a time just to like feed the tap room. So that sort of held it in spots. Uh, but otherwise it was just it could have been like an avant-garde skate park, which was like our joke. I was like, well, we could always open a a waiver heavy skate park back there, but no. There's a pivot for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um when not specifically to the brewery, but just in terms of of Halloween, when when did you all realize how bad it was?
SPEAKER_03I mean, we live right on Mackey Creek. So we could we watched it come up 15, 20 feet, um, where it's normally just like a trickle. And when our when our neighbors evacuated and came up the valley to stay with us for a few weeks, uh, we didn't know how long it would be, but certainly like watched it in real time as the two like small bridges on our road went. We saw one go, and then you could hear it go, and just the boulders hurtling for those days, and like the it's just sounded like thunder. Um yeah, and seeing, you know, huge I-beams being taken down the creek. Um we knew it was serious, but like didn't really have any idea how bad it was in town. I know we'd had spotty cell service up there, so I know just was on the phone with one of our neighbors who lives in downtown, and the phone was breaking out, and then all we could all I think all you heard was like gas leak. And I was like, oh no. Uh and what happened was the one of our planter boxes had smashed up against the front window, ended up sort of saving the slab of the tap room. Uh, but there was a tree that had come through one of the windows, and uh our friends had come by and they could smell gas just pouring out of the building. So they shut the luckily shut the gas off, but you know, a flick of a cigarette would have just exploded.
SPEAKER_01But uh we we didn't have anything like that happen to us, obviously. Um our our our son's school was like flooded and you know, a total loss. Um but I I do remember since it had been two weeks since we had talked, like just standing in my backyard, uh like staring into nothing and thinking about like thinking about folks like you, because I had remembered there was a line that you said, Jess, where you said that we are semi-aquatic people. And you know, I'd you Chris, you had talked about just like how you love to like lie in the creek. Yeah. Uh and I was just like I was like think I was like so worried for you all personally, uh you know, not to mention the brewery. So I I can't imagine what it would have been like for you, like not being able to get here, not knowing, not hearing anything, and just kind of like wondering, like, what does this place look like?
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't know if Chris mentioned this, but we actually had to shimmy across a log um to get out. And this was the day after the storm. Um, because our road was completely blocked, the bridge had gone, but um it caught all the trees that came uh down the creek, and then there were power lines and everything wrapped up, so we should meet across a log and then finally got here, had to climb through the window to get in. Um and but before then, yeah, we had really no idea. We were like totally offline um during the storm. Chris was out in it because the water was starting to come under our house, so he was digging a trench around our house to kind of divert the water. And I'm I remember just standing at the window watching the watching the um the creek kept coming up and up. It was like halfway up our driveway and the trees, you could just hear the trees like breaking every few seconds, and I was just so worried for Chris because he's out there, and then yeah, it was pretty, pretty wild to to kind of be right there on the creek while all that was happening. Um and yeah, we had no idea what was happening in town. We actually somehow got service and then suddenly saw pictures on Facebook, and I was looking like, oh my gosh, look at what happened in town. And then suddenly I scrolled to one and I was like, oh, that's our property. Oh my gosh. And that's the creek right by the brewery. Oh no, like we need to get there as soon as possible. Um and but also I think I was a little bit worried about being able to actually get out if we needed to. Um, so that second day I was like, I need to, I need to know we can get out of here, first of all, but also we needed to check on the brewery because like Chris said, the neighbor, um, we'd get like, you know, a minute or 30 seconds of a call. And it was just like, you you have you need to come. Like this is going on. There's a gas leak, and and we were worried that someone might, you know, come in here, get hurt or whatever. So we made it a priority to get here. And yeah, it was stunning what what we found. Um and it's actually a a crazy story, but our neighbor who we went on a little adventure because our neighbor who drove us here, her husband works on the other side of the mountain, um, and he uh had hiked over the mountain um to get back here because he couldn't stay at his work. Uh and we like had to go up all along uh the creek to get there as and we so we got to see like the full scope of what had happened.
SPEAKER_03But we got to got to see some other friends who were there who have been here their whole lives. Yeah. And yeah, catch up with them, and then it's then it's like the group, you know, start to see them and other folks showing up and uh state trooper who's our neighbor who was there too, and just like catch everybody up a little bit, and then all right, let's go find let's go find our our friend. And um yeah, that was it was uh an interesting experience for sure.
SPEAKER_00It's pretty wild that you know people who people were showing up who were going through it too. Kind of felt like everybody was going through it in one way or another.
SPEAKER_01Um but the Buddha first uh first baby on the podcast. It's like I I have things to say too. Yeah. So going back to your house though, like the w the the water never made it to your house or did it?
SPEAKER_03No, luckily it it made it like halfway up our driveway, but um yeah, nothing nothing in the house, so it's good. Awesome, very lucky.
SPEAKER_01Um Well in I guess the the days after that immediate shock, uh, you know, what did your conversations look like in terms of how do we how do we move on from here? How do we even think about getting out from all of this and and reopening?
SPEAKER_00I don't think we really had a conversation, to be honest. I think we just kept showing up and scooping mud.
SPEAKER_03Just one task at a time. It's like just scooping mud and maybe come some compartmentalizing of like, all right, we've got this task and we're gonna scoop mud, and then from there we'll uh start to collect things and see what's broken and what's what's fixable and salvageable, and then start cleaning things and it's just like one foot in front of the other without thinking too far ahead. It's like drowning in the endless amount of tasks that it seemed at the time. Uh was it was a significant possibility of like there's too much, too much to try and process. So just like, yeah, one task at a time and and then take it from there, I guess.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, it felt a little bit impossible to wrap our heads around what what actually needed to be done.
SPEAKER_03Um But it would be like, you know, we'd be shoveling and then like the DOT would be coming by and it's like, no, no, no, wait, don't don't bury our sign. You know, our sign's knocked over, our friend made a metal sign for us, and like we want to salvage that. It's like, oh okay. And everybody's, you know, super happy to help and like, yeah, yeah, we can get that. Where do you want us to set it? Okay, yeah, set it over here. So, you know, there's like an eight-foot deep hole, you know, where our front seating area would be. Um so yeah, it was it was a lot of reactive moments, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Well, reactivity, but also a little bit of serendipity. Um, I think uh I remember the day that I was sitting here, like, what are we gonna do with all of our kegs? Um how many kegs do we have? Hundred.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, 100 and 100 or so. 140.
SPEAKER_00140 something. So they were all over the place. So we were trying to figure out how are we gonna clean these and store these. Um yeah, so we were talking about bringing them to another brewery and just clean and store them. And um also at that time we didn't have running water.
SPEAKER_03Or electricity. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we really didn't have a way to do it. Um, but that same day the town turned the water back on, and this random guy who I don't even know if he'd ever been in the tap room. Um, but he just showed up, he was really nice, and lent us a tractor trailer. He was like, Oh, do you need a tractor trailer? I have a bunch. I can just bring it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he just showed up and he's like, I have a fleet of like a hundred, hundred tractor trailers, and you know, if you need one, I'll drop it off. And he dropped it off just out of nowhere and like not asking for anything, just like wanting to help.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um and that was like yeah, total game changer. Okay, now we have a place where our once we've pressure washed and cleaned everything, we can stage it and store it.
SPEAKER_00And don't have to haul it anywhere. We were planning to run a U-haul and all that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and ha what's we didn't get over 40 for months, I feel like. I feel like it was a couple of months we didn't go to Asheville. Because it was just such a such a mess and so much to deal with here, and it was safer to just go well, obviously safer to go uh east. Um but yeah, that that tractor trailer.
SPEAKER_01Like that was so nice. Going back to to what you were saying about the slab, like I seem to remember seeing some photos of like an excavator back in there. So like you I mean, basically all of that got ripped out, and in a way, this whole place was gutted, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So we since the slab was so destroyed, we have a garage door back there, but um there was a the concrete had bucked up two feet. So uh our concrete guys that did the work ended up having to sort of demo and flatten what was available, remove most of it, and then uh I was on a big forklift and they were on their excavator, and so we were sort of passing tanks from the excavator to the forklift, and then I'd park them out in the um out in the the lot and just covered them in tarps. And uh the brew house, since it's skid mounted, just on one the mash tun and kettle are all on one one skid all pieced together is was a challenge because you know it's it's only like six thousand pounds, but can't really pick it up with an excavator and forklift can't get in. So it was sort of like this it was interesting. It was a little hairy, but we got it out and uh yeah, it it it survived, so it was good.
SPEAKER_01Um and I mean when when we first spoke, you'd kind of told me that your production dreams had come true back there. Uh but then before you reopened and and as you were in that early reopening process, you were essentially homebrewing in here, right? Like is that a fair way to describe how you reopened?
SPEAKER_03So uh some of our uh farmer they were farming at the time. Um he had an electric brewing system, knowing I wouldn't be able to brew in the back. And that one yields I can yield about 10 to 11 gallons on that. Um so that and then any beer we were able to salvage. Um there's a wild ale on peaches and sort of uh in other words, sort of homebrew setup a way to package that into like homebrew cakes. Um and yeah, salvaged that and then salvaged at least a couple of laggers. Um and then there were a few Furcans that were were okay. Actually, one of those ended up going down to Atlanta at the brick store. They put one on for an event which was which was fun to have a uh yeah, but yeah, that and then yeah, just brewing homebrewing like two to five times a week uh in the tap room, trying to keep up with everything. Uh mostly keeping our beer engines going too. Uh because we could do like one firkin at a time. Uh but then after a few months, it you know, it is love brewing, but you know, it gets tedious, you know, it's five days a week packaging another two days, and so it's just plus having the tap room open is just nonstop. Um got a little bit larger electric system, but still home brewing. Um that's now sort of our pilot system for the for the seven barrel in the back.
SPEAKER_01But I I I can see how it would get like uh to be a lot. Um but but in that early stage, was it like, oh, this is fun, this is like I'm at least I'm brewing again.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. No, I I love I mean I any whether I'm brewing 10 gallons or 200 gallons at a time, it's equally fun. But uh if we can just stretch that so people aren't disappointed when the best bitter kicks, and it's like, well, I'm sorry, I'm I'm really only brewing one perkin at a time, so that maybe you'll get us, you know, halfway through two-thirds of the way through the weekend, uh until it could create like a backlog and and have some stuff backed up. But but yeah, no, it's yeah, happy to be brewing 10 or you know, small batch or big batch, it's all all exciting. But yeah, trying to get that into a little more of a sustainable uh practice long term, because diving through all of the mechanical and electrical issues in the back, just we didn't really know how long that would take. Um so yeah, it yeah, it's just sort of like, okay, well, we got the 10-gallon. All right, now what if we go to 22 gallon? And here's the next step. And again, only like pulling the blinders up just a little bit of like, okay, we can see this far and and continuing there. When when did you get back to to regular operations back there? So February of this year. Okay. Um just a few months ago. Uh and a lot of our beers are very like time consuming. So it's like before we opened initially, you know, I started brewing three to four months ahead of time to make sure we had enough loggers that are taking, you know, eight weeks. Um so it was really, really once once the pumps were wired back into all of our VFDs and everything, it was uh then it was time to yeah, really, really start brewing almost nonstop again, just on a large system instead of the 10-gallon. Um but yeah, I had just wired up uh the replacement pumps and then just went into labor. And so it's like, well, this is all gonna pause for an unknown amount of time. Um but yeah, then got back to it uh early February. Do you remember what the first thing you brewed back there was? Yeah, we brewed uh was it cremail? I think it was cremail, yeah. That's just the definitely like the the tap room locals favorite for sure. Uh we're in between batches right now, so the last keg kicked this last weekend, so we should have some out of this new batch this coming weekend. But yeah, I was like, oh Chris, you're out of cream ale. What am I gonna do? I'm sorry, the Kolsch. Drink some Kolsch.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So getting back more into like the brewery itself and and outside of Helene, um obviously there's no farm here, uh, but Jess, you are a farmer.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Currently I am farming at our house. Um we moved to Old Fort in 2023. Um, I had been farming in Black Mountain before that, um, mostly growing vegetables, selling to markets and restaurants and neighbors. Um but um when we moved out here, uh I decided to close that operation down and start um on our property out here. So I've been slowly uh prepping land out there because it's since we're right on the creek, it's all full of rocks. So the quarry, right? The quarry. Yeah. So um, yeah, I've been working on that.
SPEAKER_01What does farm brewery mean to you?
SPEAKER_00It could mean a lot of things. Um literally, we farm some things that go into the beer. Um I'm growing a lot of different herbs and flowers and things. Right now we have a wild yarrow beer on that uh features some yarrow from our garden. Um, and I grow things like coriander for our wit beer. Um, but we're also sourcing as local as we can. Um, so featuring a lot of local malts, um, and really overall trying to convey the idea of beer as an agricultural product. Um because I mean, traditionally it is, right? Um so really making that trying to set up the space to make that connection for people. Um where eventually we plan to grow um a little bit here um in our green space at the brewery. So um hopefully that'll be a more tangible thing. You know, people can actually be drinking a beer with some kind of fun ingredient in it and then go out to the garden and actually see it growing, maybe touch it, smell it, um, kind of make that full circle connection.
SPEAKER_01Um I know, I'm not asking you any questions anymore.
SPEAKER_00He has a lot to say. Very interested in the microphone.
SPEAKER_01We're really interested in the microphone.
SPEAKER_03So we had planned to have that showpiece, sort of showpiece garden in the green space before we opened, uh, but building out during COVID and prices and things got crazy. So we had to sort of trim sort of phase it out as far as the like the long-term vision of where we want to get with the space.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think there's another piece to it too, right? Is like our farm store, which is just a little corner right now. But um it's um I think it's important to us to kind of showcase that collaboration with other locals uh growers and makers and shine on that piece as well. So yeah, you can come in here and buy fresh vegetables and cheeses and meats and eggs, that sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01That that is always one of my uh like second favorite things to do here after I look at the beer list to then like peek at the the fridge and see like what kind of awesomeness awaits me there. Um I kind of on a similar note, um, you know, you you all highlight that you you make Appalachian farm beers. Uh Chris, how do you define that?
SPEAKER_03I mean, that I usually have an idea of either a place or sometimes more just literally like the ingredient uh that either Jess is growing or or somebody in the area is growing, um, and then sort of finding a way to uh sort of build around that flavor profile or accent that flavor profile. Appalachian farm beers is I feel like a lot of that identity for me is rooted in taking something from like some of the classic beers I love out of southern Belgium and northern France, and sort of picking them up and dropping them here in Western North Carolina, and um, you know, all starting with a base of locally grown and malted um malts, uh barley and adjuncts, um, and then sort of pushing them in a direction of uh an identity of its own. It's sort of like maybe rooted in a style, but pushed with often an ingredient uh versus a process into sort of one one way or the other. Um like taking a, you know, we take a Vienna Lager base and then blending in about 20% of a locally foraged chaga uh tea that we make in the house, and trying to sort of highlight that ingredient um in a way that really makes sense and being intentional about it.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Maybe something like we're reaching toward or pointing to always.
SPEAKER_03Because that's the you know, that's the I don't know. I've never I I'm often tinkering with recipes, much to the dismay of the staff. Um but always in this like endless pursuit of some unattainable goal of like I want this beer to taste like this. Um and you know, maybe we we change, tweak a little bit here, tweak a little bit there, um, but always in this pursuit. And is it like a fixed destination, or is it just maybe my palate's changing or what what I want to drink changes subtly?
SPEAKER_00But well, I think you come from a place of um being passionate about traditional styles and beer history, um, and that I'm always pushing him in the direction of like, hey, you know, let's this would be really cool in a beer, you know, let's let's mess around with this. Um and so I think he has both that really technical side. Um, so some of our beers are really more traditional. And then the farm beers are where uh he tends to get real creative, and it usually just starts with the ingredient um and then goes from there. So it's I it's always really cool for me to kind of see where it ends up. Um I think the I think the the weirdest one was the the grape lager, but it's one of the the best ones, I think. Or has it does sound weird. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That was just another sort of serendipitous uh there's some folks that had a wedding venue over in Conover, and they're like, well, we planted like 400 muscadine vines in four varieties, and we don't we're not really doing a ton with them. Would you want to make beer out of it? It's like, oh yeah, yeah. But like, but how are we gonna do that? We don't have a press. Um so yeah, we just decided to do sort of an abbreviated, well, not even abbreviate, but like a carbonic maceration on the grapes where we just throw them in a lager tank, uh, high pressure, keep it cold, and then just let them ferment. Uh and yeah, after a few weeks, just start to see some juice coming up the sight glass, and then had a like a nine-week just light lager ready to blend on it, and then send that into the tank and let those macerate together for another like 12 weeks. Um, and then it just came out to this sort of like cotton candy, like very muscadiny. Um just, you know, such a unique flavor in its own. Um but yeah, that ended up being folks love uh seem to love that one. But yeah. Um or like, yeah, I feel like that was a fun one, but getting I don't know, we'll do more like in the Appalachian farm style sense, like grissette sort of to a T, like reading Stan Hieronymus's book and being like, all right, this is what we want to execute, but okay, we're gonna incorporate um you know marigolds into those sort of peppery, sort of highlight some of like the peppery little citrus uh profile to it, where it's like, okay, here this is easily somewhat quantifiable on paper. Whereas like the Yarrow wild is like, all right, what if we don't add any hops to this? Do sort of a Gruet style with Yarrow and get that bitterness derived just from Yarrow, and then throw a couple of strains of Britannomyces. Britannomyces at it. Not a Britanamyces. No, not a fan of bread. No bread. Young wine maker beer. Um but yeah, and then see where that goes.
SPEAKER_01Um when I when I come in here and I see beers like that on on the list, I'm excited and I and I want to try them, but I'm also just always excited to just have a smoke telus uh or a bitter or a cream mail. Um and you know, there's there's plenty of breweries where you can go to get 15 different IPAs, but uh and and you're not putting them on here. Uh where does your appreciation for those like classic styles come from? And you know, I also saw you just you you just released a Kolsch. Uh so talk a little bit about your appreciation for those styles. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I when I got started in the industry, I was in South Florida, which was sort of a brewery desert. Um, so a lot of also being sort of like a history nerd, um, loved like diving in and trying to trying to find a lot of classic styles, reading a lot of Michael Jackson's works, Great Beers of Belgium, and then sort of like ticking those off and just sort of sort of like reading his impressions and then reading my impressions and then trying to, you know, figure out how those would translate on a on a homebrewing scale. Um but also like coming my first job in the industry was in wine, um, which of course is tied so so essentially to location. And a lot of old world wine certainly is tied into history as well. So that I think sort of started my love for like tying in and understanding history and why things are done in the wine world, and then it just translated over into the beer world and sort of getting sort of like a snapshot into both the history and the culture that surrounds those um sort of like drinking destinations, brewing destinations. Um and it's just something that I I feel like gives me the it answers for me the question, like why are they like why are, you know, is is Pilsner Quell brewed in Pilson, why are they doing that? Um, why is why is Bitter or or real ale still alive and and working in the UK and trying to recreate that?
SPEAKER_01Here's a fun exercise for you. Maybe it won't be fun, I don't know. Uh but if somebody hands you a glass of beer and says, this tastes like Western North Carolina, what do you think is in that glass? I think a lot about corn.
SPEAKER_03I I think corn especially. Uh I mean, when you drive around Old Fort and you get outside of town, you'll see cornfields. Not as much as like where I grew up in central well, in Illinois, but it's all corn and soybeans, but um I think that tying in somewhat to like being in a dry county, and it's never been really a dry county. Certainly there's a lot of moonshine that was was being run and goes on, and it's part of, you know, Appalachian history here and corn being such an integral part of that. Um I think of that tie to that adjunct that is so it is such like an American um North American uh crop. But that yeah, I guess as far as the style, I do think of I do think of something like corn heavy. Um yeah, I I I guess to like tie it in, I guess, to our brand, like cream ale that's something that's like easy drinking, goes down after a hard day's work, because I I I feel like the area here people have long been like hardworking people. Yeah. Yeah. And how how did the Kolsch dinner go? Oh, it was great. Yeah, yeah. That was that was a lot of fun. That was sort of an experiment in taking the element of choice away from people. Like I think we kind of want people to have a little bit of faith when they come in to our place, even on a when we're open during the weekend, and have faith that we can set you up with something interesting if you're curious and have something hopefully delicious that you enjoy if you have a little bit of faith in our process and and what we're doing. So with the Kolsch dinner, we paired with uh Lyndon and Adam uh of Honey Badger Bakes and Jolly Barbecue, and they did a like a full spread of sort of German-inspired food. And then we took the element of choice for beer completely out of the element um or out of the equation and just did uh a Kolsch out of like a cologne-style, Kolsch-style ale. Um, so just like crisp, light, a little bit of fruitiness. Um and we were serving them as trying to do the honor we could do uh like Kolsch service in Cologne, where it's just a traditional seven-ounce Stanga tube glass, um, and your coaster is your tab. So uh our our bartenders are just walking around and dropping, you know, when you you're getting low on beer, drop one and mark your coaster. And if you're done, you just put your coaster on top, and that's the signal to yeah, good, satiated.
SPEAKER_01Um and is the hope to do more things like that more more start doing more events?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. We'd love to try and do something at least quarterly. Then yeah, things like that that sort of and again having not been to Cologne, I feel like I am appropriating it, but um being able to like try and create that sort of drinking and drinking and sort of community experience for folks. Um, you know, I know there were a few folks that have been to Cologne and they're like, oh, it's like it's just taking us taking us back. It's like, oh, okay, cool. Um but yeah, trying to trying to create something fun for you know the folks that come and see us and make something a little bit different than our usual operating procedure.
SPEAKER_01So speaking of usual operating procedures, especially when we we think back on Helene and everything that took to get back to last year, to get back to February, like do you do you feel like things are normal again, if that's uh even possible?
SPEAKER_03I think so. I think selfishly I'm I feel there's normalcy in being able to get back to like brewing on the system, on the big system. Um, because you know, the almost two years of not brewing is there's certainly like so many itches to scratch when you can't like, you know, it's you can't play your guitar. It's like if you if your guitar is broken and you you can't play it for two years, it's like, oh, I've got so many songs I want to play. But finally being able to uh get caught up on production and then start to think forward as to, you know, where what do we want to do, what do we want to build upon what we had done, and and uh sort of continue making some fun and interesting things in that same vein that we've always sort of always pursued.
SPEAKER_00I think we've had to change a little bit of like our approach, perhaps, um, since town has changed a lot since the storm, since before the storm. Um I feel like there is I don't know if it's tourism changing um because of the storm or the economy, or you know, we also have town has grown a little bit. There are a number of new businesses that have shown up since then.
SPEAKER_01And and other other breweries too, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So um it's a little different for us now. We're not just one of one of two. Um so that's been a little bit of a shift. And right now we're um rotating through food trucks, so our food situation has been a little um different and less consistent. Um, but we're working on that and we're trying to come up with some ideas of what that might look like in the future. Um but overall it feels good to uh at least have that kind of um feeling a little stable because certainly things have felt a little bit wild and um I I want to say we've kind of been in a little bit of a survival mode for a bit. Um and it was uh our staff has changed a little bit too since the storm. Um one of one of them started when we were just up in the tap room when Chris was literally brewing behind the bar uh on the days we weren't open. Um so she's had to kind of figure out what what we're about in our normal up normal in quotes operations. Um but yeah, uh personally, uh obviously our life is a little different now. Um yeah, so just we're juggling a little bit more now.
SPEAKER_01Well, as that kind of segues into to my last couple of questions here, which is that like a lot of people in the area, myself included, you all aren't originally from here, but you you chose to live here. You chose this place, you chose to start a business, you chose to start a family. Um and you two got engaged just a few miles away at Catawba Falls. Uh when you think about Western North Carolina um as a whole, what what did it mean to you before Helene and what does it mean to you now?
SPEAKER_03I feel like the the biggest thing which was like the ingredient that we had hoped for, but you could never like you can't contrive like the community that creates a space. It's like we can set the table, but the people that come and eat or drink in this instance are like the most special and most like crucial part of what goes on here at the brewery. Um and prior to the storm that was um like definitely, yeah, something we were so super grateful for. Um but going through the storm with all the people that we would see every week, and then it's just like this tempering of these relationships, um like tempered by trauma, but um definitely like people showing up beyond just coming to buy a beer, people showing up to shovel or to like get together and just talk it out or um you know, just just go through it all together was like the ultimate like tempering and solidifying of of I feel like the community here um that you'd never hope for, but are grateful that it happened, that it happened through like such a traumatic experience for everyone. You know, whether you lost your home or like part of your business, like everybody was going through it. Um so we all gone through it together, and I feel like that's I guess that's the difference, like taking the community that was already so special and then changing it, but solidifying it, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, really the community is what makes this place so special for us. Um I mean the beer, I think the beer's good. I hope people like the beer. The beer is just like the um the agent, right? Or like the conduit. Yeah, the the spark to that makes the the magic happen.
SPEAKER_03Um I mean we want to make the absolute best beer to our ability we can. Like no no no shortcuts or qualifying that. But yeah, it's the beer is not yeah. That like being able to brew beer is definitely like the privilege of being able to do it, but being able to share it and have people enjoy it and then people to build relationships around something that, you know, none of us need, but it's a life enhancer, I think, to some to some extent.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell We actually just got together with our neighbors to celebrate um some birthdays. But um interestingly, uh two sets of neighbors, they had lived very close to each other for we found out uh 10 plus years. Um, but they didn't actually know each other until meeting at the brewery, um, which we found out similar scenarios in in many cases. So um having the space for people to get together and get to know each other and create those bonds. I mean, we're you may come in here at some point and we're celebrating a birthday.
SPEAKER_03If someone's in a giant T-Rex inflatable costume, don't be alarmed. Happens once a year. Is that somebody's birthday suit? Well, it's me. Our friend's name is Rex, and so we like to give him a hard time because he does not like to celebrate his birthday, but we like to celebrate his birthday.
SPEAKER_01Oh, maybe should we put on here when his birthday is and have everyone blowing up? Yeah. Uh well, no, but it's it's yeah, it's it's amazing, I'm sure, to like the the feeling that you get that you're you're making this thing that you're so passionate about and that it it brings people together like that, that who might otherwise not might be like really close to each other, but otherwise not actually come together. That's uh that's really special. I I'm I imagine that you might have a similar answer to this question as the last one, but when you uh after all you've been through, after all this town has been through, what what gives you hope for the future?
SPEAKER_03I'm I'm hopeful and grateful every weekend to see the folks that come through the door. Um and like I'm happy to see that Old Ford is getting, you know, getting back to it, the region's getting somewhat back to it. Um excited to see tourism pick a pick back up for folks. Um I tend to not look too far beyond the four walls here. Um just to sort of try and focus on the path we're trying to keep just plugging away at. Um and yeah, so I I think I feel like dealing with the storm too. It's like if I look up and look too far out beyond like our neighbors, it can be overwhelming. Um but you know, I I'm hopeful that yeah, folks will still continue to enjoy good company and good beer. And um, you know, when times are tough, a beer and a friend is a perfect pairing. Uh when times are great, it's a great celebration too. So it's, you know, something that um hopefully we can just continue to keep doing what we're doing and what we love and um, you know, be there for folks when they need us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I would say, you know, we're still here because of the kindness and generosity of friends and strangers. Yeah. So I that makes me hopeful. Um I think people, I mean the uh, you know, news media, whatever makes the world seem like a scary place sometimes, but at the end of the day, especially when you're um cut off from all of that, uh people up close aren't so scary. I think uh people generally want to be kind and help each other out. So I think and we've lived through that. Um so I think that's something to be hopeful about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I guess seeing that, like seeing folks come together in the tap room, regardless of ideology or upbringing or what you do for work or your political ideas, like seeing everybody sidling up next to each other, having good conversation, constructive conversation, and uh just sort of taking off the weight of the world a little bit. Uh by yeah, just either focusing on the beer or focusing on the conversation and just getting back to like what's important, like interpersonal face-to-face time that, you know, even with COVID we were deprived of. And like it's where I feel like hope is that we'll get back to that through you know, things like tap room. Uh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And there's still beer. And there's still beer.
SPEAKER_03There's still beer. There's still beer.
SPEAKER_00As long as there's beer, there is hope.
SPEAKER_01That's all for today. Tremendous thanks to Chris and Jessica Whaley for joining me. And also to Jasper, who is officially the youngest guest on the show. You'll know that Jasper was here. Jasper, you're definitely in the episode, okay? You made it. You made it into the episode. You can learn more about the brewery at whaleyfarmbrewery.com, and you can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram where they're at Whaley Farmbrewery and at Whaley Farmstead. If you're enjoying this podcast, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen. Consider leaving a rating and a quick review, or share it with a friend, as it really helps more people find the show. You can find OnTheBlue Ridge on Facebook and Instagram at OnTheBlue Ridge, and online at on the Blue Ridge Pod.com. Our theme music is the song Goa, written by Lindsay Pruitt and performed by the John Stickley Trio. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Blue Ridge.