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"FacebookPinterestFullSteam.png\n\n\"The South is in danger of losing its southernness,\" Sean Lilly Wilson says. So he built, of all things, a brewery in North Carolina.\n\nThe south is a foodie mecca of humble traditions and unselfconscious localism. It's not terroir there; it's dirt. But try to wash down your heritage hog jowl and sustainable grits with a beer to match, and you'll reach for one brewed far away, probably in a city where those grits come with hipster cachet. Food trends flow north, but beer is still trickle-down.\n\n\"Southern beer drinkers are no different than beer drinkers in San Francisco, or New York,\" Wilson says. \"We're just as radded about brettanomyces and bourbon barrels.\" But for years, a 6% ABV limit on beer made or sold in North Carolina meant if you wanted good beer, you had to drive to Virginia or make it yourself. Thanks to Wilson's Pop the Cap campaign, the limit rose to 15% in 2005, opening the door for a brewery like FullSteam.\n\nRun by Wilson, former Abita head brewer Brooks Hamaker, and homebrewing wizard Chris Davis, Fullsteam officially opens in Durham  this Friday. From its taps flow southern beer\u2014which is what, exactly?\n\n\"Local is very authentic here. It's not an ephemeral fad,\" Wilson says. \"We looked at the success of the locavore movement, and thought beer's problem\u2014or its challenge\u2014is that people think it's brewed in an industrial vat.\"\n\nPeople think so, because it is. At most breweries, no matter how leafy-green their logos, hops and barley come in the door in 50-pound sacks packed in Germany, England, Belgium, or even New Zealand. For brewers willing and able to work outside those supply lines, brewing locally means using locally grown hops. (Even locally-grown barley often has to be malted overseas.) That's one thing in the Northwest, where hops are an established industry, but another in North Carolina, where agriculture is just another word for tobacco. So Fullsteam uses what they can find: parsnips, kudzu, rhubarb. Davis thought up a basil beer when he stuffed some garden-grown leaves in a can of Bud at a party. Carver, a beer made with sweet potatoes, is deliciously odd, with a refreshing but unplaceable earthy sweetness; the First Frost persimmon beer is as subtly fruity as the best Belgian ales. There's even a beer made from grits.\n\nFullSteam's Workers' Compensation line is more traditional: IPAs, milds, and an incredible stout that tastes like R.C. Cola and MoonPies. Their Plow-to-Pint series is where the weirdness happens. But to local farmers, home-grown hooch isn't weird at all. \"They know what we're up to, and we know what they're up to,\" Hamaker says. \"I don't want to stereotype, but this is North Carolina. A lot of these small farmers, well, they're making some really clear homebrew.\" In a state where it was practically illegal five years ago, local beer isn't that strange after all. No one else makes beer like this, and it can only be made here. Those Yankee brewers whose beer he used to smuggle in, says Hamaker, tend to have only one thing to say: \"I wish I could do that.\"\n\nFullsteam opens its Durham, NC taproom on Friday. For more beer news and reviews, follow @beercraftbook."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-draft-fullsteam-brewery-invents-saves-southern-beer>