Anyone who grew up in rural America, especially in the South, may remember fondly the old general store which not only carried many of the essentials of life but was also a gathering place for people in the community, especially in the winter when the clientele (often men) would sit around the pot-bellied wood stove exchanging stories and probably whittling on a piece of wood at the same time. This is the stuff of a Norman Rockwell illustration.

I contend that the beer supplies store represents for craft brewers essentially the same spirit of camaraderie that was present in that old general store. What social scientists are calling a “knowledge community” is fashioned around the accessible supplies store as home brewers come together to exchange information while gathered around admiring the latest equipment (Figure 1), perusing the variety of kits and/or grains needed to brew an old standby or to experiment with something new (Figure 2).  Sometimes the home brewers are simply chewing the fat with the knowledgeable owner of the store about brewing techniques or recent successes and failures that he or she may have experienced (Figure 3).

Brick-and-mortar beer supplies store have been a fixture on the craft beer landscape since the laws pertaining to the brewing of beer for home consumption were relaxed. Home brewers need the specialized equipment and ingredients available from such stores and it was the more successful and entrepreneurial home brewers who served as the catalyst for the expansion of the craft beer movement in the United States.

I argue that despite the wide on-line availability of the supplies needed by the home brewer, there will probably always be a need for a local brick-and-mortar supplies store as well.  If my home brewing colleagues in Bowling Green, KY, need an Irish barley to brew an Irish red ale, they would rather buy that grain in Bowling Green, assuming that it was available there, than driving all the way to Nashville, more than an hour away one-way during the best of traffic conditions, to purchase it. And now, for the first time, it might just be available in Bowling Green because Chris Karraker has started a brew supplies store there called “Blue Holler Brew.” Karraker and his wife recently opened their store that is named after an area across from his home in Edmonson County, KY called Blue Hollow. In the South, a ‘hollow’ is often shortened to ‘holler’ and that is the reason for the name of the business.  In addition to selling “anything that it takes to home brew beer,” Mr. Karraker also sells 15 craft beers in both glasses and growlers, ten of which originate in Kentucky (Figure 4). He eventually hopes to dispense different craft beers from 30 taps.  So a customer could come to the store just for the beer and bypass examining the brew supplies. Seating in the store is, however, somewhat limited. Karraker hopes to expand that seating capacity by changing his lease to include about an eight-foot wide parcel in front of his store that would not block the public sidewalk so that he can put two or three small bistro tables for outdoor seating. The laws are such that one has to have such an outdoor parcel declared private property because it is illegal to have open containers of alcoholic beverages in public in Bowling Green.

Karraker chose his location for three excellent reasons. First, rents are relatively cheap in the rather forlorn strip mall where the store is located (Figure 5).  Many other types of retail businesses rely on easy access and/or foot traffic for their viability.  High visibility is not, however, as important to the beer supplies store as is centrality to the specialized market of home brewers and craft brew connoisseurs that it is designed to serve.  So instead of seeking out high cost downtown locations, such specialty stores can succeed in lower rent peripheral areas. Secondly, the store is relatively close to Western Kentucky University and its students represent a large percentage of the market for the beers on tap that he sells. In fact, Karraker considers his major competitors not the three beer supplies stores in the Nashville area, but rather a restaurant and a wine bar in Bowling Green that also sell a wide variety of craft beers. And finally, parking is plentiful in the strip mall where Blue Holler Brew is located especially after many of the other stores close for the evening.  Blue Holler is open until 10 PM Monday through Saturday. When I interviewed Mr. Karraker for this blog entry he discussed his rationale for starting a second career as the proprietor of a beer supplies store. He said that he got tired of driving to Nashville in order to obtain his own home-brew supplies. Of course he could have ordered his supplies on line, but there are consequences of such transactions. As he tells it, Karraker, an avid home brewer, once placed an on-line order for $180 worth of materials. But, a $40 shipping and handling fee was tacked onto that order which he thought was exorbitant and provided the impetus for his desire to open his own beer supplies store.  A greater relative percentage of the total cost of items such as grains that are bulky and/or of relatively low value per unit of weight are probably less expensive at a centrally located brick-and-mortar supplies store compared to an on-line source. So, brick-and-mortar supplies stores should always have a role to play in the craft beer movement. Alternatively, the on-line purchase of items that are more compact and/or worth more per unit of weight (e.g., exotic hops, specialized equipment) may be more cost competitive compared with the brick-and-mortar store despite shipping and handling costs. Complementary businesses (e.g., microbreweries, brew pubs) located near to beer supplies stores increase the possibility of knowledge exchange and innovation.  Beer supplies stores serve a centralizing function for craft brewing in general. Enthusiastic home brewers are anxious to meet with knowledgeable supplies store employees to exchange information about the latest equipment, brewing techniques, recipes and exotic ingredients with which they may have experimented. In fact, there are some sanctioned home brewing clubs that meet in brewing supplies stores for the very reason of information sharing. Already a local home brew club has approached Mr. Karraker about holding their meetings in his store. So, eventually Blue Holler Brews may become the modern-day equivalent of the old general store except for the lack of a pot-bellied stove.

This blog entry was written by guest blogger. Thomas L. Bell. Tom is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Tennessee. He currently lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky where is an Adjunct Professor of Geography at Western Kentucky University. He is co-editor of FOCUS in Geography, a scholarly journal published by the American Geographical Society. Tom’s research interest are in marketing geography and location theory. More recently he has done some work on the American craft brewing industry in the southeastern United States and also on home brewing.