Grubarazzi

Jeremy Kirby, the Brewmaster at Sunken City Brewery , moved his family to the small town of Hardy near Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia to brew beer where no one else has brewed beer before. This is hard to find in today’s United States, where every thriving metropolis from Colorado to Baltimore City has new small-batch breweries popping up every day creating exceptional hand-crafted beer that make the Executives at Budweiser cry their big boy eyes out. But Jeremy was intent on finding a hidden city to allow him to craft his brew for a new market, and he found the perfect spot at Sunken City Brewery.  Jeremy was kind enough to give us a tour of Sunken City Brewery during out last visit providing us with a behind the scenes look at the guts of the brewery and a brief history behind the name. As legend has it, an entire town was submerged in Smith Mountain Lake when the damn was built and the lake was born, swallowing cemeteries, churches, and brothels alike. The brewery...

For more than a decade my grandparents have owned a home directly on the water at Smith Mountain Lake, a rustic small town in the heart of Virginia. At least five times a year the family members uproot their normal lives to drive hours to this charmed place. We drink, we eat, we laugh, and we annoy the hell out of each other. The men typically spend the entire weekend fixing things while the women cook and the kids sleep in. It’s just the way it is down there. We all revert to 1950’s house wives. I am not sure if it is the long, windy tree topped roads, the gorgeous Virginia Mountains, or the absolute tranquility we feel spending just a couple of days in the country. But we simply can’t stop going, and we simply would not. All of us don’t make it down for every weekend but we do our best. The kids are all in college, the older cousins are establishing their lives, and the aunts and uncles are strewn about. The truly special occasions are when we all make it, and the house i...