Solstice Farm Brewery: A dream 30 years in the making
Your first greeter at Solstice Farm Brewery may be a comely blonde seeking a back rub. That’s Halle, Ed and Anna Shore’s friendly 9-year-old dog.
Step inside the cozy brewery to find windsurf sails draped from the ceiling amid dripping fairy lights, a taxidermied shark grinning by the dart boards, and a deer derrière presiding over the entrance to the restrooms. A hula-skirted bear in a coconut bra gazes down from above the bar. Beer mugs hang from countless hooks on the walls. A glass partition behind the bar offers a view of the brewing area, and board games of all ilk are piled to the right of the bar. If you want to purchase a souvenir, there’s even a small kiosk-like area for buying branded items.
This is a place to feel welcome even before you order your drink at the burnished wooden bar.
A dream 30-plus years in the making
Anna Shore ’88 and Ed Shore ’88, ’07 met through friends as Virginia Tech students and married just two weeks after graduation.
Even as work – she as an electron microscope lab supervisor and he as a mechanical engineer in nuclear power with Dominion Energy – took them to Tidewater, then Richmond, even when she went to graduate school for environmental health, even when their two sons were born, even as she left the corporate world to teach high school science, the urge to return to the Blacksburg area was strong.
“Many will ask what was in the Blacksburg water supply during the '80s to make so many students from that era want to come back,” Anna Shore laughed. “It’s certainly how we felt. Blacksburg is ... sticky that way. This place is a dream 30-plus years in the making.”
Eventually, circumstances made the calling to return irresistible.
“In 2019, Ed took early retirement from Dominion Energy, and by 2020, the COVID pandemic was gripping the world,” Anna Shore said. “When I read about a great deal on rarely available property in Catawba, we pounced. We had long dreamt of starting a microbrewery and hops farm, a passion ignited when I gave Ed a brewing kit some 25 years ago, and he created a magnificent altbier.”
“We spent the first nine months rebuilding the house on the property, informed by YouTube university,” Ed Shore said. “And we planted the first of the hops. The name Solstice Farm Brewery was inspired by the jaw-dropping sunsets and our interest in sustainability.”
So what about that beer?
“I spent time in Europe when I was young,” Anna Shore said. “People sat for hours over their wine or beer, savoring it slowly, treasuring each other’s company. That’s what we envision here.”
The beer on tap – by design – is lower in alcohol content than the beer in bottles available for purchase to go. Draft beer clocks in at 6 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) or lower, whereas the bottled beer’s ABV is about 10 percent.
“We know we’re in the middle of winding roads and hills,” Anna Shore said. “We want everyone to get home safely.”
There are usually around a dozen beer varieties and a hard seltzer in rotation at any given time.
Because the beer is microbrewed, the Shores experiment with impunity, often adding local ingredients to tasty effect.
“Right now, we’re brewing a maple and spruce tip infused ale,” Anna Shore said. “It will be ready for sampling next month. The maple is from friend and fellow Virginia Tech alum Frank Garman, an agriculture engineering graduate. We visited him a short while ago. Next year, we will source the spruce locally. The idea for this beer came from the Rob Ayers, the owner of Catawba Forestry, which is close to us.”
Sustainable and local are prominent themes at Solstice Farm Brewery. The building itself is a former hot rod shop, so it was already wired for electricity. The wood on the walls is from the original house on the farm; black metal accents come from the old roofing; the trellises for the hops are sourced from a mysterious former structure that lives on in several local farm properties. And about those hops — the Shores grow about 300 hop plants of three varietals that take a year from shoot to harvest. The hops grow up to 30 feet tall on their trellises. You can’t miss the trellises as you pull up to the microbrewery.
What the future holds
The Shores think of the brewery as an extension of themselves. There are no employees. They are not interested in growing bigger.
“We feel lucky,” Anna Shore said. “Our hobby has turned into our vocation, and we want to savor the pace and take time for things like hiking and biking.”
Not only are they avid hikers, but they are also published in the Appalachian Trail guidebook and often give respite to exhausted hikers.
Their two sons, now young adults themselves, one a Hokie and the other a University of Virginia graduate, also inspire the business. One son comes up with recipes, the other designed and built the website. A friend of the latter devised the original bottle labels.
As for advice to current Hokies?
“Get a good feel for the possibilities that are out there in terms of careers. But be sure to develop your hobbies, too,” the Shores said. “Our path proves that you never know where you’ll end up. Be open to experiences and possibilities because they can take you somewhere magical.”
