The Habitap tap house and restaurant has just launched its own brewery, Habitual Brewing, right from the tap house at 1325 Miller Rd., just off Woodruff Road.
Patrons of The Habitap will no doubt be familiar with the setup of the tap house, with roughly 50 craft beers on tap at any given time. But COO of Southern Culture Hospitality Group Jonathan Mills said in the three years since The Habitap has been open, he and the rest of the team have been regularly fielding questions about why they didn’t make their own beer.
“We’ve always celebrated the beer community and been a part of it, and so we said, ‘Absolutely. Let’s do it,’ and about a year ago, we set those plans in motion,” Mills said.
The result of those plans are now flowing from Habitap’s taps, with six new beers released this week. They include a hazy New England IPA, a classic Hefeweizen wheat beer, a pilsner, a Kolsch and a stout, with more on the way.
Given their years of experience in the craft beer industry, the practical challenges of opening a brewery were less daunting for The Habitap team, Mills said.
“We already had the staff to handle the beers,” he said, “and naturally you’ve got to get your infrastructure right, ensuring you maintain quality control, controlling your water and making sure you’ve got good filtering in place to make sure your beer will be consistent.”
Tuesday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
But beyond the physical parameters inherent in making beer, there was the creative aspect to consider. Despite craft beer remaining a relatively small percentage of the overall market — it sits at roughly 12.3% of the American beer market, according to the Brewers Association — Greenville is by no means in want of excellent craft beer.
“There’s a lot of competition out there, so you kind of have to bring it,” Mills said.
For head brewer Candice Campbell, who has been brewing her own beer for more than a decade, the goal with Habitual Brewing was to purposefully work within certain boxes of expectation.
What that means is, an IPA will taste like an IPA, a pilsner will taste like a pilsner, a stout will taste like a stout, and so on.
“I love beers that are full of 80 different ingredients and are really funky and wild, but I also like a ‘simple is best’ kind of approach, personally,” Campbell said. “My big thing is to stay in this little box but still have a little fun.”
The variations on the form are subtle but distinct. The Weiss Ol Joe Hefeweizen, for example, will be familiar to any fan of wheat beer, but Campbell uses a triple-decoction method, which is a traditional brewing technique that was perfected in the centuries before thermometers and modern equipment.
“It just adds these different aromas and different flavors,” she said. “It’s just something I love to do, and figuring out what works, testing out different strategies, is what hopefully makes us honor the guidelines of what these beers should be, while still pushing things forward.”
