Coors fermentation tanks at Farley Vale Farm
It makes sense to locate a brewery near a major city; transportation costs from the manufacturing site to the customer can be reduced, but the costs of labor and taxes will be low outside the city limits. That's why Budweiser is brewed in James City County.
The other major manufacturer with a brewery in Virginia is Coors. In 1987 Coors built a plant near Elkton where they blend, package and distribute 7 million barrels of Coors beer to Eastern markets. Rockingham County has excellent water supply and water quality, so Coors beer in Virginia includes Shenandoah Valley - as well as Rocky Mountain - water.
If you ever saw the movie Smokey and the Bandit, you remember that the thin plot line was based on a race to deliver Coors from the western states. That's now an outdated scenario. Coors can sell its beer nationwide now, in part because starting in 1987 it sent tank cars with "beer concentrate" (a specially-brewed, high-alcohol version of its standard beer) from Golden, Colorado to Rockingham County. Adding water and packaging in Virginia reduced the shipping costs substantially to the Northest and Middle Atlantic markets.
Coors upgraded that packaging plant to a full-scale brewery in 2006. This involved importing 40 fermentation tanks from Ziemann, Germany, and shipping the tanks to Elkton. The tanks were shipped to Hampton Roads, then barged up the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahannock River to the Farley Vale Farm just downstream of Fredericksburg.
Geting the 70-foot long, 21-foot in diameter tanks from a farm in King George County to Rockingham County required truck transport over the highway. Traffic lanes on Routes 3, 29, 33, 649, 340 are about 12-feet wide, so special convoys were arranged to interrupt regular traffic and two lanes, in order to ship the fermentation tanks by truck the last 100 or so miles across the Blue Ridge to the Shenandoah Valley.
Yes, it might have been easier to install the tanks in 2006 if Coors had decided in 1987 to build its packaging plant in King George County. However, the company found the right mix of cheap land, abundant and clean groundwater, available labor force, and access to markets in the Eastern United States via rail (Norfolk Southern) and truck 9especially via I-81) in a different location - Rockingham County.
The major commercial beweries manufacture beer in a few massive facilities and ship their product to stores and restaurants. Most Virginia microbreweries produce much small batches of beer, and have to attract customers to their facilities or rely upon just local retail sales. Combining a microbrewery with a restaurant can showcase brewing equipment to attract customers, and sell the product directly.
The microbreweries in Virginia are located with a different pattern than wineries. Wineries are typically in rural areas, but most Virginia microbreweries are located near universities or in large population centers (especially Alexandria/Arlington and Richmond). Nearly every part of Virginia tries to attract tourists who spend money at restaurants, but to support a microbrewery it appears a community needs to be near a university or an interstate highway. The Bardo Brewery in Amissville (now closed) may have been the most-rural microbrewery in Virginia. It was located in an old Oldsmobile dealership, but sold the beer in Arlington.
Virginia Beer Factoids:
- On January 25, 1935, the first cans of beer (Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale) were sold commercially in Richmond.1
- Neon signs advertising beer may be placed inside a bar, but not in the front window of a restaurant. Virginia's Administrative Code prohibits advertising alcoholic beverages on any exterior window.2