The June issue of Charleston Magazine is out, and it includes my 12-page feature on the State of Suds in Charleston. A lot has happened on the local craft brew scene over the past five years, including a wave of local breweries closing amid a larger national slump in craft beer sales. My feature looks at where local beer stands today and how its makers are navigating the choppy waters.
For the piece, I interviewed a half dozen local brewery owners, only one of whom lacked a beard. (Jamie Tenny of COAST.) As usual, I got way more information than I could possibly use in a magazine feature, including lots of great takes on current trends in the craft brewing world. I thought I’d share one of those here and also catch up on another drinking trend here in the Holy City, one that’s quite cheesy.
Flavors of the Month
Cameron Read, co-owner and brewing director at Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co., has a theory about how beer drinkers’ tastes are evolving.
“It’s kind of funny,” Read says. “You can almost map it to the flavors that the tongue can perceive.”
First, he says, “we go, hey, there’s a thing called bitterness in beer. Cool. How bitter can we get? I mean, do you remember the IBU Wars?”
He’s referring to the early years of the craft beer boom, when beer geeks embraced the extra-hopped India Pale Ale style. West Coast brewers concluded that if a little of something is good — namely, the bitterness imparted by hops — then more of that thing must be better, so they dialed up the hops even more, creating “extra, extra hopped” American IPAs that were increasing aggressive in their bitterness. Bearing names like “Hopslam” (Bell’s), “Hop Stoopid” (Lagunitas), and “Hoo Lawd” (Dogfish Head), the labels proudly declared the beer’s IBU score (that is, International Bitterness Units), which regularly reached 100 or more. (70 IBUs, for the record, is considered “very bitter.”)
By the time Edmund’s Oast opened its production facility in 2017, the inevitable backlash against high-IBU beers was underway. “Then we go, oh, cool, acidity! Sourness is a thing,” Read says. “OK, how sour can you get?
“I remember when we started making our sours here, one of the critiques was they weren’t sour enough. Now it’s like, ‘they’re too sour.’ So that kind of shifts again, and now we’re seeing this kind of sweetness thing up to 11. I mean, you got these weirdo “Barleywine is Life” guys, and you know, the former Eighth State Brewing up in Greenville [which closed in 2024], they had some really decadent dessert-like beers. I’m talking intense dessert flavors . . . barleywine stouts, strong ales.”
When you map it out on the tongue, Read says, “you go bitterness, acidity, sweetness. My joke is, when are we gonna see like the super saline beers? Probably never, but . . .”
At this point Scott Shor, another of Edmund’s co-owners, interjects. “Don’t say never,” he says. “All these things follow some other trend. Dirty martinis are very popular. People could start drinking salty beer. It’s not impossible.”
So there you have it: salty beer. The hot trend for 2027. You heard it here first.
Cocktails Get Cheesy
Speaking of hearing it here first, I had a short feature in the prior issue of Charleston Magazine exploring a different Charleston drinking trend: cheese-washed cocktails. If you recall, a wise man predicted not too long ago that 2026 would be the year for cheese-washed cocktails. It turns out I was right.
I already had a few data points when I made that prediction, and I tracked down a few more examples of cheese-infused cocktails, coming up with a total of five, which is quite sufficient for declaring a trend. I pitched the idea to my editor at Charleston Magazine in February and, against all odds, she accepted it.
Before the May issue hit the streets, though, Kalyn Oyer of the Post & Courier sprinted out ahead of me and published her own round-up of local cheese-based cocktails.
To my surprise, she turned up four cheese-inflected cocktails that I had somehow missed:
You Just Fold It In at Doar Bros, which is topped with cream cheese foam
Everynight Fire Works at Bar Weem’s, made with goat cheese-washed tequila
The Bruschetta Martini at Momo in North Charleston, featuring strachiatella-washed Tito’s vodka
The Fat and Nasty at Sweatman’s Garden, a margarita variant with queso-washed Lunazul tequila and a Tostitos salted rim
The only overlap between our pieces is the Black Sheep at the Archer, which has a base of goat cheese-washed gin and was the cocktail that launched my whole cheesy cocktail monomania in the first place.
I should note that between the time I wrote my Charleston Magazine article and Oyer wrote her Post & Courier one, the Archer swapped out its second cheesed-based cocktail, the manchego-infused Say Cheese, with yet another example, the El Mancheguito 75. It’s a spin on the French 75 that blends the manchego-infused gin with apricot, marcona almond, and lemon and finishes it with a Lambrusco float. I had one the other day, and it’s delicious.
For those keeping track at home, that’s a total of ten (10!) Charleston cocktails that incorporate cheese in some form or fashion.
But wait, there’s more! Not too long ago, I stopped into the Rappahannock Oyster bar for a dozen or so on the half-shell, and I spied this cocktail on the menu:
That’s the Feelin Dirty, a dirty martini made with blue cheese-washed vodka.
I think that’s more than enough to declare Charleston the cheese-infused cocktail capital of the South, and maybe even the entire United States.
A Cheesy Coda
During my Edmund’s Oast interview, after Cameron Read and Scott Shor opined on the likelihood of salty beers becoming a thing, Read proceeded to riff on other flavors we might see after that.
“Super capsaicin heavy beers,” he said.
“Ugh,” Shor said.
“Or super umami,” Read added. “God forbid — super umami beers!”
“Fat washed beer?” I offered.
Read didn’t seem enthused by that prospect. “We’ve seen a little bit of, you know, maple bacon, coffee maple bacon, or whatever it was. We’ve seen some of that.”
Before I could suggest an experimental blue cheese-infused stout or perhaps a goat cheesed-washed saison, he was on to other topics, like the latest sour flavors Edmund’s is releasing this year.
I still think it’s a million dollar idea.
Quick Bites
Jeremy Markovich of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole has the latest news on the fate of Neese’s Country Sausage, which mysteriously vanished from grocery stores in recent months. The good news: it should be back on the market soon, albeit from a new producer.
The Indigo Road Hospitality Group just announced it will soon be opening a new Charleston-area restaurant called Riva Mare. While the format — coastal Italian — doesn’t strike me as particularly noteworthy (these days, it would be more noteworthy if it wasn’t an Italian restaurant), the location certainly does. It will occupy a space on the ground floor at 2154 Noisette Blvd in North Charleston, smack in the middle of the old Navy base. That’s Storehouse Nine, a World War I-era naval warehouse that has been transformed into 78 boutique apartments for “creative tastemakers.” Riva Mare’s opening is slated for “late summer.”
Parker Milner of the Post & Courier reports that 167 Sushi Bar — long one of my under-the-radar favorites — will be moving later this year from its tiny East Bay Street building into a larger space at 5 Cumberland Street. Milner notes that space was formerly the home of Bumpa’s Irish bar and, before that, Cumberland Street Smokehouse, Egan & Sons, Moe’s Downtown Tavern, and dive bar Jimmy Dengate’s. He might have added, but didn’t, that before Jimmy Dengate’s it housed a meat-n-three called Squeaky’s.
I forgot that Moe's Crosstown had a second location!