The Deep South

Destinations by Paul McMorrow | Feb 2007 | Issue #2

Tips on drinking your way clear through Dixie

Weeping Radish Eco Farm and Brewery

This past summer, Uli Bennewitz’s Weeping Radish celebrated 20 years of bringing authentic Bavarian food and beer to North Carolina’s Outer Banks in a big way: it opened the doors to a new 7-acre, 5,000-square-foot brewery and organic farm.

The new Weeping Radish Eco Farm and Brewery—a complex that was more than four years in the making—sits across Albemarle Sound from Bennewitz’s original restaurant in Manteo, and carries the German expat’s attention to purity and authenticity to the extreme.

Eighteen 20-barrel lagering tanks crank out beers brewed in accordance with the Bavarian purity law of 1516. Year-round offerings include an organic Dusseldorf Altbier, golden Munich Helles, Oktoberfest, Munich Dunkels, and Hefeweizen. Head brewer Matt Glass’s winter seasonal, a rich Doppelbock, clocks in at 11 percent ABV.

Visitors sample beers inside a 1920s country store façade. Bennewitz saved the thing from a Manteo scrapheap, disassembled it, shipped it up the road and rebuilt it at the brewery.

But this is a brewery that’s not just about the beer. Weeping Radish’s farm has an on-site butcher who carves up fresh cuts of locally raised, hormone-free beef, pork and chicken. They also make authentic German sausages and smoked meats, and sell locally grown organic produce at their Farmer to Fork co-op market.

“The beer is grain to glass. There are no additives or anything,” Glass explains. “And the Farmer to Fork theme looks at food the same way that the purity law looks at beer. Everything’s authentic, everything’s all natural.”