Brian Cendrowski

Interview with Tom Davis, Brewmaster and Founder of Thomas Creek

As I started branching out and trying new beers back in 2001 and 2002, I remember having something called a Thomas Creek Dopplebock at Jake’s Bar & Grill in Columbia, SC. At the time I really didn’t know what a dopplebock was from Johan Sebastian, but it was a dark and intriguing. It was one of the first dark beers I truly enjoyed. I credit it as being one that helped me crossover into craft beer.

Fast forward a few years. In May of last year, I moved to Greenville, SC, home to Thomas Creek since 1998 and is one of two surviving breweries in the city. I first met Tom Davis, brewmaster and founder of Thomas Creek, at an Upstate Brewtopians homebrewers club meeting he was hosting at his brewery later that fall.

Tom is an avid supporter of homebrewers in Upstate South Carolina and he’s always willing to share some of his years of experience to those starting out or to crusty vets looking to try something new and crazy. He is certainly a Yoda-like figure in homebrewing circles up here, though he’s a lot taller and not green.

Tom and his crew at Thomas Creek were gracious enough to spend a few minutes with me this week so I could learn more about the brewery and where he came from. This is his story and I’m sticking to it.

Left to Right: Matt Manthe, Bill Davis, Tom Davis

Beer Heritage

The story really begins back in 1956. That’s when Bill Davis, Tom’s father, had his first beer. Bill grew up on PBR, but in the 1970s, his career as an architect brought him out to Oregon and Washington for many business trips.

It was around this time that the craft beer renaissance began in the United States, and Bill took notice. As Bill said, “I’ve never brewed in my life, but I know what good beer tastes like.” This stuff was definitely not PBR, but he liked it.

Even though Bill never got into brewing himself, he must have infected his son Tom with the fever he caught on West coast.

A Brewer Is Born

Like many would-be commercial brewers, Tom got his start homebrewing at age 21. The difference between Tom and most beginning homebrewers was that he didn’t just jump in and start brewing. If he was going to do it, he was going to do it right.

Tom got his hands on all the brewing books he could find, and he read and researched for over a year before trying his own hand at it. He skipped the 5-gallon extract brewing that most of us start with and went straight into brewing 10-gallon all-grain batches.

His reason for getting into brewing was that he knew there were a lot of good beers out there, but his choices in South Carolina at the time were limited. He knew his tastes were “slightly off kilter,” as his standard fallback beer of choice was Strohs, not the Budweiser or Miller that most of his friends drank. Tom’s early craft beer influences were Ayinger, Newcastle, Sierra Nevada and Tucher.

The Brewpub Years

Tom was a bartender and unofficial manager at Henne’s Restaurant in Greenville in 1994 when South Carolina passed a law making brewpubs legal in the state. The owner of Henne’s wanted to turn the restaurant into a brewpub, so he bought a tiny 3 1/2 barrel system.

At a Henne’s staff party that year, Tom had to convince the guests that beer he brought, which everyone loved, was homebrew that he had made, not a commercial beer. Henne’s owner immediately gave Tom the keys to the brewhouse.

Despite having full creative license over the beers he wanted to make, after a few years of brewing at Henne’s, Tom knew that he wanted to grow beyond what the brewpub could offer, so he began looking into going out on his own.

Tom knew that he wanted to focus on beer and did not want to have to worry about food and everything else that comes with a brewpub. In addition, he wanted to take advantage of the economies of scale that a brewery would offer. Tom explained, “Because of the laws in South Carolina, it’s easier to reach more people as a brewery distributing beer than it is to start a chain of brewpubs.”

In South Carolina, you have a choice of being either a brewpub and only selling your beer within your own walls, or you can be a distributing brewery and send your beer to the four corners of the globe. It’s one or the other, you can’t do both.

The original 3 1/2 barrel system from Henne’s is still used at Thomas Creek for special brews and experimenting with recipes

Starting Thomas Creek

With the help and financial backing of his father, Bill, Tom began the search for a commercial brewing system and a warehouse in Greenville to put it in. In 1997 they found a good deal on a 60-barrel system from the recently defunct Woodhouse Brewery in Kernersville, North Carolina.

It turns out the hardest part of starting the brewery was not finding the brewing system but finding a place to put it. It took over a year to find the ideal location to house the brewery. There were no warehouses in town that had sloped drain floors that are key for breweries. Breweries are like water parks, and if you constantly have to squeegee all that water and spilled beer off the floor, it would be a real pain in the arse.

Luckily, Bill was talking to a neighbor about their troubles finding a warehouse for the brewery, and that neighbor happened to own Husky Construction Company. He offered to build a warehouse for them on the site of an old junkyard on the Piedmont Highway on the south side of town.

The next step was coming up with a name for the brewery. There is not an actual Thomas Creek that the brewery is named after. The “Thomas” is obvious, but they decided on Creek because they liked the water theme and the rustic image that the name portrayed. It seemed to fit Greenville and the Upstate of South Carolina.

So in 1998 they fired up the brewhouse for the first time. They started with two beers, Appalachian Amber Ale and Multigrain. (Multigrain was discontinued a couple years ago when Thomas Creek went through a rebranding effort. The Multigrain style didn’t fit in with the other styles they were adding to the lineup, so it was put out to pasture.)

The funniest story Tom told of their brewing exploits was from a non-alcoholic beer they brewed at the request of one of their distributor’s accounts. (As I learned, you make a non-alcoholic beer by slowly boiling the alcohol off of a fermented beer.)

The first time they made this beer, they had the ventilation system going in the brewery, but they had all the doors closed. A couple hours into boiling, there was enough alcohol vapor in the air that everyone in the building was hammered. That’s the first time I’d ever heard of a contact high from beer!

Thomas Creek These Days

A lot has changed in the beer world since Thomas Creek began in 1998, particularly in South Carolina. “We’re about 15 years behind the west coast in terms of beer acceptance,” Tom observed. Certainly, there is a craft beer culture growing here, but most people still think of beer as the yellow, fizzy stuff.

Thomas Creek has adapted its own brews over the years. Tom weighed in, “Changes in the beer laws have turned people’s heads to try new stuff. The Class Five IPA we sell now never would have sold five years ago. We used to brew it at 46 IBU, it’s now up to 86.”

Last year, Thomas Creek released their first high gravity beer, an “extreme” IPA that pushes the bounds of sanity at 12% ABV. It’s malty sweet and hoppy, and if you’re not careful it’ll catch up with you in a hurry. Despite the high ABV, there is no alcohol burn. It’s very smooth.

Thomas Creek has enjoyed consistent success. Since opening, they have twice expanded capacity, adding four 60-barrel fermenters two years ago and another two this past summer. Their capacity now stands at around 18,000 barrels per year.

Thomas Creek’s 30-barrel brewhouse

They also employ six full-time employees, including Assistant Brewer Matt Manthe. Matt graduated from Clemson in 2008 with a degree in biology. Even in college, he knew he wanted to use his degree to become a brewer. “My professors all thought I was crazy,” Matt said.

Matt came to work for Thomas Creek straight out of college. Bill mentioned how it worked out for both of them, “Brewery jobs are hard to come by, so this was a great opportunity for Matt, but we’re also extremely lucky to have gotten to him first. He’s very talented.”

One reason that they have been able to expand so much is that Thomas Creek contract brews about 50% of their production. Bill summed it up, “Tom simply loves brewing and isn’t as concerned with what label goes on the bottle when it leaves the brewery.”

Some of the brands Thomas Creek contract brews are Kind Beers (Charlotte, NC), Orange Blossom (Orlando, FL), Holy Mackerel (Melbourne, FL), Monk in the Trunk (Orlando, FL) and Charleston Brewing Company (Charleston, SC). They brew a total of 36 different labels in the brewery.

Thomas Creek brews eight of their own year-round selections:

• Up The Creek Extreme IPA
• Class Five IPA
• Dockside Pilsner
• Falls River Red Ale
• Appalachian Amber
• Deep Water Dopplebock
• Pump House Porter
• Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale

They also have a winter seasonal coming out in early December on draft only, Jingle Bell Bock.

As craft beer appreciators and homebrewers in Greenville can attest, it’s good to know we have someone in our city looking to protect us from the Dark Side. May the force be with us.

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