Craft beer fans get ready for the documentary of the year, dubbed From Grain to Growler.
Craft beer fans get ready for the documentary of the year, dubbed From Grain to Growler.
Megan Troy and Aaron Stanley came together as craft beer enthusiasts to create a documentary embodying the industry of the much beloved beverage in Virginia. The movie will include coverage and interviews from many of Virginia’s breweries, festivals, and some of RVA’s own breweries including Hardywood, Strangeways, Triple Crossing and others. Because it’s 2014, you can do your part to help fund this project via their Kickstarter page.
Both Stanley and Troy are natives of Virginia who enjoy the craft beer industry and believe the work behind it needed to be shared with the world.
Stanley is the executive producer and director of From Grain to Growler as well as the founder of Take a Penny Productions, who is producing this film.
From Grain to Growler isn’t be the only film the studio hopes to produce, but it’s definitely their main focus and brainchild right now.
During the filming, Troy and Stanley travelled across the state of Virginia to discover its most influential craft beer breweries as well as its festivals, craft beer bars and pubs. They’ve been trekking since April, and plan to wrap up filming in July.
What brought their attention to craft beer was not only the enjoyment of the beverages themselves, but the vast growth of the industry. “The more breweries we got to go to and check out, we started realizing the growth of the industry itself in Virginia,” said Stanley. “Going from forty in 2010 to almost eighty today and projected almost 200 in 2016, 2017.”
This growth of breweries in Virginia can be contributed to the passing of SB 604 in 2012, a law allowing breweries to sell pints for consumption on site. Since then, the industry has grown two-fold, creating jobs and contributing to local economies along with simply making consumers of craft beer happy.
This is something the film hopes to show. “It’s across the board a great thing for Virginia in general […] For the sense of community, for these specific brewery owners, and, at the end of the day, for the consumer history of craft beer,” Troy stated.
Based on information they gathered so far, Troy and Stanley have found that the craft beer industry should be able to hold competition with the big business beer industries. Although only about six percent of Virginians drink craft beer, it has grown from two percent over the past five years and continues to grow.
Stanley even believes Virginia could be the next big craft beer state along with Oregon and Colorado. In his eyes, Richmond could be the next Asheville or Portland as ‘a craft beer capital.’
This was shown especially after Virginia won the medal for fifth place in the Great American Craft Beer Festival trailing behind Oregon and Colorado. “It seems to be this place where people really appreciate [craft beer] and there’s this burgeoning sort of community that’s developing around it,” Stanley reflected.
If craft beer is a passion you share with the growing number of Virginian’s, the stories behind the places which make it by hand are something you’ll need to experience in this documentary.
It will be a short 40 minutes packed with information, and will premier in August. The first showing in Richmond is slated for August 9th at Capital Ale House Downtown and you can grab a ticket for this by supporting them on their KickStarter.
It will be coming back to Richmond for the Folk Festival September 13th and 14th if you aren’t able to catch it the first time around.
