News

LIBATION NATION: Seventh Avenue becoming city's Brewery District

Owner Mike Baer and brewer Dustin Griffin plan to open Guidon Brewing Co. up the hill from Southern Appalachian Brewing Co.

By Lightning Reports, Published: November 2, 2018

Guidon Brewing Co. 

Necessity was the mother of invention for Mike Baer and his new brewery in the Historic Seventh Avenue District.

“I needed a job when I left the service,” he says. Reconnaissance, his Army specialty, “didn’t translate” into the jobs he hoped to land. “Nobody wanted to hire me in management.”
Discharged as a sergeant first class, he’s a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And although he did end up with a fulltime job, he’s still pursuing the dream. He and his wife, Connie, who also works fulltime, have been working nights and weekends getting the brewery ready.
Named for a flag designating a military unit, Guidon Brewing Co. will have indoor seating with a loft, a 1,000-square-foot deck and a stage. His own Guidon flag features an image of hops, a B for Baer and the numeral 4 signifying
Baer plans to open with 12 taps and, until a kitchen is finished, a food truck. He plans to specialize in doner kebobs, a Turkish specialty made of seasoned rotisserie-grilled meats.
“I’m a big fan of them myself,” Baer says. “It’s a great beer-drinking snack.”
He’s hired Dustin Griffin from One World Brewery in Asheville as brewmaster.
Baer and Griffin say they don’t worry that adding two more breweries — another brewer plans to open Bearwallow Brewing Co. on Seventh Avenue at Locust Street — will oversaturate the neighborhood.
“It’s only going to cause a problem if people decide they want to stop drinking beer,” Baer says. “They don’t want to just show up at one.”
“It’s all in walking distance,” adds Griffin.
Working in the brewhouse on Tuesday, Griffin was hoping that a control panel for his fermenters would arrive this week.
“We’re hoping we’re going to be able to open this year,” he says. “The tasting room’s coming along. We’re getting the tap lines in this week or next week.”
On a recent Saturday, artist Monica Tucker was working on a mural that showed a languid scene of a mountain man strumming a banjo by a river. That represents what Baer calls “a comfortable environment, very inviting.”
“Everybody is comfortable and happy and having a good time,” he says. “It’s welcoming and fun.”

Bearwallow Brewing Co.

Around the corner from Hendersonville’s first brewery and Guidon Brewing Co. could be yet another taproom. Matt Noell said the brewery is still in the planning stages and he’s a ways off from having a projected opening date. Noell incorporated his Bearwallow Brewing Co. in September 2017.
Lew Holloway, the city’s downtown development coordinator, said in conversations he’s had Noell has talked about adding an inside taproom and using an outside space on the northwest corner of Locust and Seventh.
Built around 1905, the three-story structure is considered the oldest brick building in the Historic Seventh Avenue District. It housed Hyder’s Grocery and a restaurant before the Henderson County Bank opened there in 1920, organized by John P. “Dock” Hyder. It was later American Bank & Trust. Smiley T. McCall operated Depot Salvage in the building from 1937 until 1975.