Colonial taverns, temperance crowds, mountain moonshine and one Ashburn brewery that started it all. This is how Loudoun became Virginia's beer capital.
Before Loudoun had breweries, it had ordinaries: roadside taverns where travelers, farmers and politicians drank, ate and argued.
1607
Beer comes ashore
English colonists bring beer to Jamestown, home to the first brewery in the American colonies. Water was risky. Beer and cider were what people drank.
1647
Six brewhouses in Virginia
A traveler reports six public brewhouses in the colony and "good barley" for malt. Most brewing still happens at home, and mostly by women.
1730s
Settlers reach the Catoctin
Quakers build Janney's Mill on Catoctin Creek, the start of Waterford. Pennsylvania German farmers form the German Settlement that becomes Lovettsville. Home brewing comes with them.
c. 1728
Chinn's ordinary
Settler Joseph Chinn turns his fieldstone home on an old trail, today's Route 50, into an ordinary for travelers. The village that grows around it becomes Middleburg, and the building still pours today as the Red Fox Inn & Tavern.
The Red Fox Inn & Tavern in Middleburg, begun as a small stone building around 1728. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress
1757
A county born around a tavern
Nicholas Minor had opened a tavern where the Old Carolina Road met today's Route 7. When Loudoun County forms in 1757, he names the cluster of buildings around it "George Town." In 1758 it is chartered as Leesburg.
Loudoun's county seat grew up around a tavern.
Nicholas Minor's "George Town," 1757
1769
Robert Fryer's ordinary
Fryer is licensed to keep an ordinary in eastern Loudoun. Centuries later, archaeologists dig its cellar and find far more 18th century beer and wine bottle glass than at typical homes of the day.
From the cellar
Free-blown 18th century wine and beer bottle bases, recovered from the cellar of an eastern Loudoun ordinary. The site held far more bottle glass than period homes nearby.
1775
News arrives at the taproom
Leesburg has at least three ordinaries around the courthouse: Mosses', Herryford's and McCabe's. Word of Lexington and Concord reaches town in April 1775, and McCabe's taproom is where locals likely talked it over.
1790
34 gallons a year
The average American adult drinks about 34 gallons of beer and cider a year. Colonial brewers stretch barley with whatever is on hand: molasses, honey, even persimmons.
02
1800 to 1915
Farms, Inns and Temperance
Loudoun's farms prosper, inns line the turnpikes, and a growing temperance movement starts filling Leesburg's streets.
1825
Lafayette comes to Leesburg
Crowds pack town for the Marquis de Lafayette's visit. Drawings on the upstairs walls of the old McCabe's Ordinary are believed to date from that week.
1870s
The temperance revivals
Temperance meetings draw 3,000 to 4,000 people to Leesburg. Extra rail cars bring supporters out from Washington and Maryland.
1914
Loudoun votes dry. Leesburg doesn't.
In Virginia's statewide prohibition referendum, about 54% of Loudoun voters say yes. In Leesburg, about 58% vote no. The state goes dry anyway.
03
1916 to 1934
Dry Years and Moonshine
Virginia shuts off the taps three years before the rest of the country. In the Blue Ridge, Short Hill and Bull Run mountains, the stills fire up.
1916
Virginia goes dry
Statewide Prohibition begins November 1, 1916, more than three years before national Prohibition. Enforcement gets creative.
1922: a "hooch hound" trained to find liquor checks a fisherman's back pocket on the Potomac. Photo: National Photo Company, Library of Congress
1920s
The moonshine files
Whiskey sells for about $2 a pint along Route 7. Stills hide on mountain ridges, creek bottoms and even an island in the Potomac.
A moonshine still confiscated by the Internal Revenue Bureau, photographed in the early 1920s. Photo: National Photo Company, Library of Congress
Case file · Route 7 · early 1920s
Broad Run Toll House
A favorite place to buy whiskey until tolls ended in 1924: $2 a pint, $8 to $9 a gallon.
Case file · Ashburn · 1923
The raid at Belmont
A Leesburg IRS agent raids a still on the Belmont property and is shot and killed by its guard.
Case file · Potomac River · 1930s
Tenfoot Island
Stonemason Earl Batt runs a still on an island just over the Maryland line and ferries half-gallon jars to the Virginia shore for $3.
Case file · Goose Creek · 1935
Never told
"Old Man" Quesenberry shoots a revenue agent near his still. He gets 27 years and never reveals where the still was.
1933
Repeal
Legal beer returns nationally that spring. On October 3, 1933, Virginians vote almost 2 to 1 to end Prohibition.
As legal beer returns in 1933, a Washington brewery truck unloads cases for President Roosevelt while a crowd looks on. Photo: Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress
1934
Virginia ABC is born
The General Assembly creates the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control on March 22, 1934. In Loudoun's hills, a few home stills keep running for decades.
04
1968 to 2010
The Pioneers
One brewery in an Ashburn office park changes everything, and trains the people who will build what comes next.
1968
Liquor by the drink
Virginia restaurants can finally serve cocktails. The modern hospitality era begins.
1989
Old Dominion opens in Ashburn
Jerry Bailey leaves a government job and opens Old Dominion Brewing Company in a small Ashburn industrial park. It becomes Virginia's largest craft brewery and puts the state on the craft beer map.
The Old Dominion family tree
Old Dominion BrewingAshburn, 1989
Lost Rhino2011 · Matt Hagerman and Favio Garcia
Old Ox2014 · founding brewer Kenny Allen
Dynasty2018 · brewing director Favio Garcia
Many of today's Loudoun breweries trace their roots to one Ashburn office park.
2001
Sweetwater Tavern, Sterling
Sweetwater Tavern gets its brewery license, brewing beer for its Sterling dining room.
Catoctin Creek opens in Purcellville, Loudoun's first legal distillery since 1916.
2009
Old Dominion leaves
After Bailey steps away and Old Dominion joins Fordham, the Ashburn brewpub closes in 2008 and production moves to Dover, Delaware, in 2009. Its brewers stay in Loudoun.
05
2011 to 2016
The Boom
Two new state laws, a handful of Old Dominion alumni and a lot of farmland turn Loudoun into Virginia's beer capital in five years.
2011
Lost Rhino revives the scene
Old Dominion brewers Matt Hagerman and Favio Garcia open Lost Rhino in Ashburn in May, furnished with tables, windows and doors bought at Old Dominion's auction. In July, Corcoran Brewing's farm opening draws 900 visitors.
SB 430 creates farm brewery licenses, opening western Loudoun's farms to brewing. Adroit Theory, Old Ox (whose founding brewer also came from Old Dominion) and Old 690 open.
2015
Seven openings and an Ale Trail
Ocelot, Dirt Farm, Loudoun Brewing and Vanish Farmwoods are among seven breweries that open. Black Hops Farm starts the Mid-Atlantic's first commercial hops processing, and Visit Loudoun launches the LoCo Ale Trail.
Loudoun reaches 18 breweries. Statewide, breweries grow from 21 in 2012 to 98, and no county has more than Loudoun.
Breweries in Loudoun County
11989
182016
30+2019
35+2020
42Today
06
2017 to today
Brewing Together
The breweries organize, compete, give back, and start looking back at the history they are part of.
2017
The LCBA is founded
Loudoun's breweries form the Loudoun County Brewers Association to advocate, train and promote together. Crooked Run opens a second brewery in Sterling.
More than 35 breweries are linked by the LoCo Ale Trail. Virginia also makes every county "wet" unless local voters choose otherwise.
2023
One beer, many breweries
The first Annual Charity Collab brews "You Are Not Alone" for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The collabs have since given more than $172,000 to local charities.
The first Loudoun Beer Awards sell out. Year 2 sells out too. Loudoun breweries also pour colonial-inspired beers on the Revolutionary Brews trail for the nation's 250th.
Dates and details come from the sources below. We have not found a documented commercial brewery in Loudoun before 1989. If you have records, photos or family stories about brewing or taverns in Loudoun, we'd love to hear from you.
