News

New beer garden will pour 25 taps in 1950s service station

Blue Ridge Beer Garden in the coming weeks will start pouring a wide selection of beers at 402 S. Church St.

By Bill Moss, Published: July 6, 2022

Although it may be a little sister to Beer City USA next, Hendersonville still punches above her weight when it comes to local taps.

Those on the hunt for craft brew will find a rich quarry at the new Blue Ridge Beer Garden, which will have 25 taps plus canned beer for sale from near and far.
The beer garden is being opened by Adam Justus, the founding owner of HVL Pedal & Brews, and partners D. James Miller, whose day job is Hendersonville fire chief, and Joe Dinan, owner and head brewer of Oklawaha Brewing Co.
“We’re working to revitalize a building from the 1950s turn into an outdoor beer garden,” Justus said. “The pubcycle will be moving down there. Once we open up we’ll be starting our tours from that location as well.”
Built in 1953 as a service station, the 930-square-foot building at 402 S. Church St. has double rollup garage doors, making it especially adaptable as a brewpub. A contractor has already installed a metal awning around three sides, creating a large covered outdoor space.
“We doubled our square footage by putting that awning out front,” Justus said. “That building’s been an eyesore for many years and we’ve just invested a lot of time and money into it to revitalize that south side slope of Hendersonville and turn it into something that we hope everybody enjoys. It’s a great location right there on a busy highway that sees over 15,000 cars a day.”
The inside includes a walk-in cooler and the bar.
Justus and his partners made an agreement to use the Badcock furniture parking lot.
“So all the parking will be directed over there,” he said. “We’re just utilizing the entire parking area (on site) for seating and we’ll have picnic tables and all sorts of fun stuff.”

AstroTurf, picnic tables and yard games

Although the beer garden is not a microbrewery, Dinan plans to brew some special varieties exclusive to the beer garden. The rest of the beers will come from a wide area.
“We’ll be doing some local beers,” Justus said. “And we’ll also be doing beers from across the state and Upstate South Carolina — all over.”
Pubcycle riders can buy a plastic cup of beer and take it on board for the tour. “And when they’re done with the tour they can definitely enjoy another craft beer” back at the beer garden, he said.
“The pubcycle’s doing well,” he said. “We started out with lots of tours booking up and we’re continually taking bookings every day. We really hope that by having it parked out there by the beer garden it will create more exposure to it, because there’s still surprisingly people that really don’t know we exist because it sits behind closed doors and the only exposure we get is when it’s driving down the street or people search (on line) or through word of mouth.”
HVL Pedal & Brews is open for tours Thursday through Sunday. The beer garden will be open seven days a week, from noon to around 10 o’clock, depending on traffic and the time of year. Justus expects to open later this month or early August.
“We’ll be rolling out the AstroTurf here in the next couple of weeks and getting everything set in place, and then stringing up some lights, bringing chairs and picnic tables — a couple of yard games out there for folks to enjoy,” he said.
“We’re excited to bring the only beer garden inside the county,” he added. “We’re excited to bring it to the downtown area and offer people just an outdoor experience. Since Covid, that’s been of one of the big things that everybody’s been kind of looking for is getting outdoors, because what if Covid comes back really strong? That’s really what hurt a lot of folks. All their business was indoors and they were trying to expand out. In this location expanding out is not a problem for us — unless it’s raining. But that’s why we have big covered awnings.”