Beer Just Beyond the Border – Charlotte Magazine

Jesse VanVoorhis unlocks the front door and steps into the dim interior. “Pardon the mess,” he says. The flooring, restrooms, and bar are in place, and the brew tanks are installed. So is the neon sign in back that proudly proclaims, “Working Theory Beer Co.” But the space still reflects the name, a brewery in progress: a pile of two-by-fours on the unswept floor, miter saws and belt sanders on cluttered tables.

As of November, VanVoorhis and his co-owner and wife, Ashley, planned a soft open for Working Theory in January. Assuming they’ve opened by the time you read this, York County, South Carolina, will have acquired its 13th craft brewery and the city of York, population 8,648, its first.

“I have been brewing,” says VanVoorhis, 35, a York native who works as an insurance agent from an office in the same downtown building. His voice echoes. “I’ve got about six or seven batches in now. … Learning the system and all this other stuff, we’ll have to dump a few. But that’s just growing pains. I want to make sure the beer is right.”

VanVoorhis needs to, in part, because of the ample competition in his own county. Rock Hill attorney Chad McGowan and a team of partners opened York County’s first brewery, Legal Remedy Brewing, in 2014, and others—Slow Play Brewing, Amor Artis Brewing—have gradually sprung up in Rock Hill and Fort Mill. But post-COVID, brewery growth just south of the state line has accelerated in tandem with everything in York County, where the population has risen 30% since 2010.

Most of the population growth is spillover from the big city, of course, and the pattern of York County breweries reflects it: Fort Mill and Rock Hill are close to Charlotte and Interstate 77. But the city of York is in central York County, a half-hour’s drive from Rock Hill and nowhere near the interstate. VanVoorhis says he’s trying to draw York beer enthusiasts who’d rather not make the trip.

“We do lag a little bit here. We’re definitely a small town. People still like their domestics,” he says. “But talking with locals as we were planning this, they’d say, ‘Yeah, we’d love to stay in town and not have to go to Rock Hill or Fort Mill to go grab a beer from the source.’”

You’ll notice VanVoorhis doesn’t even mention Charlotte. On one hand, York County wouldn’t have much of an independent beer scene, if any, without its proximity to the Queen City. On the other, it’s developed into its own entity. Even if you live in Fort Mill, just 20 miles away, fighting I-77 traffic and catching a buzz in congested Charlotte seems like an unnecessary hassle, not to mention risk, when you have good options in town.

“The Charlotte beer scene is really hard to compete with, right? So us being on our own is helpful,” says Kaylin Dettman, a vice president at Visit York County, the county’s tourism agency. Visit York County promotes local breweries through its popular YoCo Brew Trail program, which awards a branded pint glass to anyone who visits at least 10 breweries.

Angelica Tepper (center) of Five Blossoms Farm in Clover contributed the farm’s honey to YoCo Buzz, a witbier from Slow Play Brewing in Rock Hill in collaboration with Visit York County.

“I don’t want to say we’re small-town, because we’re not. But we have more of that small-town feel,” says Dettman, who moved from Colorado three years ago after leading events and marketing at Cerebral Brewing in Denver. “When you come down to the breweries in York County, there’s a level of hospitality and warmness that you can just feel.”

The expansion—which has extended southeast to Lancaster County with two breweries, Lore Brewing in Indian Land and Benford Brewing outside the city of Lancaster—has inspired even York County’s beer pioneers to evolve. In February, McGowan turned over Legal Remedy to Mark Murphy, the former owner of Murphy’s Kitchen & Tap and Inishmore in Charlotte. Neither survived the COVID era. Murphy and a partner streamlined Legal Remedy’s beer menu (the County Clare native did add a dry Irish stout and an Irish red ale), improved the food, and tightened operations.

When Legal Remedy opened, crowds flocked to its novelty: a brewery in Rock Hill! Over time, as more York County breweries opened, complacency set in. The establishment needed an update, Murphy says. Although he still lives in Charlotte, he prefers doing business in the Palmetto State.

“There’s a lot of people, I think, who would argue that there’s been too much growth in Charlotte. Too much of anything is bad for you,” he says. “They’re definitely trying to drive their own identity out here in the brewing scene. People who go to breweries down here do so because it’s been a very underserved community for a long time.”

GREG LACOUR is the editor.