A Forestry Camp Grows in Asheville

To step through the doors of Forestry Camp Bar and Restaurant in Western North Carolina is to cross a threshold into another realm. An array of axes on the wall and a sea of time-worn yellow pine sets a suitably rustic-chic scene just two and a half miles south of bustling downtown Asheville. Yet the vintage vibe is much more than the sum of its carefully curated parts.

“There’s a soul to this building,” says co-owner Jess Reiser about the New Deal-era structure. In 1937, after Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps to put unemployed men to work on public works projects during the Great Depression, the US government built a campus of barracks a stone’s throw from the railroad chugging through Asheville’s Biltmore Village. They called it Forestry Camp.

Here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, the CCC began building what many consider the country’s greatest scenic byway: the Blue Ridge Parkway, which snakes 469 miles across the Appalachian Mountains from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. Men toiled by hand to cut the curving road and its iconic tunnels into the rugged landscape—stashing their spare personal belongings, extra lumber, and tools in spartan cubbies at Forestry Camp. Some of their numbered identification markers remain as clues to the past.

More than eighty years later, the Blue Ridge Parkway provides the backbone of the regional tourism industry and helps bring a nearly endless stream of visitors to Asheville. Also big business these days? Craft beer—such as the nuanced brews created by Forestry Camp’s owners, the founders of one of Asheville’s most popular breweries, Burial Beer Co. In other words, the pairing here is as natural as, say, cracking a cold one after a long hike through the woods.

That’s a far cry from where Burial began in 2013, when a trio of Seattle transplants opened a one-barrel nanobrewery in a tiny storefront just south of downtown, in the process helping to pioneer the South Slope, Asheville’s warehouse zone turned brewery district. In the six years since, Jess Reiser and her husband, Doug, alongside friend and co-owner Tim Gormley have emerged as major players in Asheville’s craft beer boom. They purchased the historic property in late 2015 and began brewing there by fall of 2016. Three years of deliberate planning, permit acquisition, and meticulous refurbishments followed before all three phases of construction were completed, which culminated in this past fall’s opening of the restaurant and bar. The property spoke to them, Jess Reiser says. It was a chance to pay homage to history and revitalize something instead of building new.

But what’s that have to do with beer? For the owners of Burial: everything. The brewery has built its reputation on modernizing classic and historic beer styles, from crisp pilsners and rare grisettes and gruits to barrel-aged sour ales and IPA hop bombs. The cyclical nature of the harvest inspires Burial’s farmhouse ales and saisons as much as it does the brewery’s philosophy. Early beers all bore the names of crude farming tools—thresher, scythe, bolo. Burial’s logo brandishes a sickle.

A brewery by the name of Burial could easily fall down a rabbit hole of zombies and other tales from the crypt, but here, there’s poetry in everything’s eventual demise. In the words of Burial’s website: “We find glory in the things that once were so we choose to celebrate the things that have passed, the things that still are, and the things that will be again.”

Their original taproom on Asheville’s South Slope is a loveable dive bar, complete with a partial rusted-out truck in the backyard that gets climbed on by toddlers and tourists alike. The junkyard-cool setting serves as a foil to the city’s increasingly slick spaces for drinking beer. “We’ve never been a shiny brewery,” Jess Reiser says. Metal sheets and rusty nails once dotted their backyard like decor with a dangerous side.

Over-the-top descriptions herald every beer release and elaborate art graces each can. The latter is the handiwork of illustrator David Paul Seymour, who caught Gormley’s attention with his album and poster art for heavy-metal bands with names like Agnostic Front, Graveyard, and Church of Misery.

From squid rice to bacalao, the food menu is as ambitious as the setting is storied. At the walk-in bar on the first floor, communal picnic tables built from the property’s abundance of yellow pine evoke the rustic cider houses prevalent in Basque Country. Bar snacks here include crispy Gernika peppers and flaky cod tater tots. Climb the stairs to the intimate dining room, where the Basque immersion takes the form of whole grilled Carolina trout and epic cuts of pork.

Building on that premise, Gormley makes the case that such an affinity for storytelling is the driving force behind every element of Forestry Camp. Behind the bar, a book of makers celebrates everyone who has helped shape the place, from fellow brewers and coffee roasters to woodworkers and record-store owners. Mounted above the dining room is a stuffed bear head—a hunting conquest from the local farmer who feeds Burial’s spent grain to his cattle. Even a section of stylish char on the walls is authentically gritty, pulled from another building on the property that sustained a fire a few years back.

At Forestry Camp, the Burial story continues to evolve. The Reisers first connected with the themes that inspire Burial as a young couple in New Orleans, where jazz funerals bring communities together to share in grief as well as joy. Likewise, Forestry Camp is a community gathering space in the truest sense of the term. Its transportive capacity doesn’t end with history and geography lessons.

Here, makers of all kinds are exalted—and compelling narratives have the power to elevate the beer experience to new heights. “The story of this property was bigger than the Burial brand and we wanted to honor that,” Jess Reiser says. “This is everyone’s space—not just ours.”