Burial Beer Co.

Burial Beer Co. was born in the summer of 2013 out of a renovated transmission shop at 40 Collier Avenue in the South Slope — as the brewery puts it, before it was the South Slope. Three founders moved from Seattle and opened nine months later on a 30-gallon brewhouse producing 150 barrels a year, with no employees, doing everything themselves including tending the bar. Co-owner Jess Reiser has described the journey since as quite a whirlwind, which is fair for a brewery that now anchors Asheville's densest brewing district and has opened outposts elsewhere. The original taproom is the one the brewery calls the crypt from which its story was born, and describes as relaxed and rough around the edges — two bars, indoor and outdoor seating, a full kitchen serving until 9pm, wine and slushies. It opens at noon daily and runs to midnight on Friday and Saturday. The adjoining music venue, Eulogy, is ticketed and 18 and over, with no pets.

For a non-drinker the picture is genuinely promising but needs one caveat. Burial brews Chaosmachine, a non-alcoholic India pale ale under 0.5% ABV, made with barley and oats, whirlpooled with Citra, Mosaic and Cryo hops and dry-hopped with Citra again — a hop-forward beer built by a brewery known for hop-forward beer, rather than a token low-alcohol product bought in from elsewhere. It sells in six-packs of 12oz cans at $15. The caveat is that Chaosmachine does not appear on the taproom's own current beer list, which runs to eighteen beers, all of them alcoholic. It is sold as a packaged year-round product through Burial's shop, and with two bars and a bottle selection on site the odds of finding it here are reasonable — but it is not confirmed as pouring, so this is a venue worth asking about on arrival rather than travelling to on the assumption of a non-alcoholic pint.