When I arrived in Norfolk in 2008, my new landlord, Kevin O’Connor, asked me if I liked craft beer before even confirming my name.

Exterior.

When I nodded and named a few of my favorite microbreweries, I felt I had passed a test more important than a criminal background check. I didn’t know about his plans to open a brewery of his own in Norfolk, but my enthusiasm for the product he hoped to sell provided a tacit vote of confidence. In the coming months, I observed (and tasted beer) as O’Connor’s Brewery jumped off paper and onto 25^th Street.

The brewery, in Norfolk’s Park Place neighborhood, looks like a warehouse because it is one. Crab grass grows through cracks in the loading dock concrete, a spool of razor wire crowns a high chain-link fence, and no identifying insignia emblazons the façade. Inside, however, South Hampton Roads’ only craft brewery takes shape.

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O’Connor, founder and CEO of the O’Connor Brewing Co., sits hunched over a pile of receipts, double-checking them with a pocket calculator. In the front office, accountant Adam Strach haggles with the Cox Business technician. And out on the warehouse floor, brewmaster Chris O’Connor (no relation) sprays out an ash-blackened keg in preparation for another test batch of beer. Using Sharpie markers to stir cups of coffee and taking turns in the one working bathroom, this trio labors unglamorously to establish a position in the lucrative and unforgiving world of beer brewing.

The brewery floor.

A craft beer brewery, by definition, produces fewer than two million barrels of beer per year. Some fifteen hundred such breweries compete in an often-suicidal struggle for market share against America’s three major beer-peddlers: ABInBev (formerly Anheuser-Busch), Miller, and Coors Brewing Co. These three giants combine for over 80 percent of total U.S. beer sales, while all craft breweries claim just 6.3% of the $100 billion industry. International breweries claim the remainder of the market.

According to Dogfish Head owner Sam Caglione in his book, Brewing Up a Business, craft brewers consider themselves part of an “alt-commerce,” the answer to America’s love affair with pale lagers mass produced with “adjuncts” like corn and rice, which dilute quality. The Brewer’s Association states that, in a craft brewery, at least 50% of the volume comes in “all-malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.” Malted barley, not hops (as Miller would have us believe), gives beer its essential body and distinctive flavor, but the large breweries cut costs by using cheaper ingredients.

Less technically, craft brewers pride themselves on the uniqueness of their product, finding considerable freedom in their inability to topple the market leaders. Marketing strategies are punctuated by quirky slogans and punchy recipe titles like Dogfish’s Raison D’Extra and Redhook’s Longhammer IPA. Business plans center on a “slower, costlier, better” approach and focus on influencing industry trends like the European tradition of casking beer. By contrast, the macrobreweries incorporate fads like lime-flavored beer and gimmicks like color-changing cans with their fast, cheap, “drinkable” product. Microbrewery owners harbor no illusions about the fact that, when it comes to beer, most consumers act on a single selling point: price. Even so, Kevin points out, six percent of a hundred billion dollar business is nothing to scoff at.

The Brewer’s Association says that the majority of Americans live within ten miles of a craft brewery. However, Hampton Roads’ only current microbrewery, The St. George Brewing Company, is nearly 25 miles from downtown Norfolk. The Hampton-based company distributes to Washington, DC, Maryland, and North and South Carolina, but will soon face competition from the nascent O’Connor Brewing Co.

Surveying his warehouse, Kevin O’Connor hints at both the challenges and the confidence he has in his own passion when he says, “it’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but I don’t need it to be. I just need it to make good beer.”

Ingredients

Necessities.

Brewmaster Chris O’Connor, bearded and built like a lumberjack, insists that a good product does not depend on any secret beer-expert alchemy, but on ingredients. “If you’ve got good ingredients, you’re going to have a good beer,” he says. Plenty of barley, premium hops, yeast, water – nothing extraneous. Kevin applies this philosophy to his business, believing that a small, passionate, knowledgeable pilot group is more important than a retail-friendly facility and staff.

And despite the all-consuming nature of the project, Kevin maintains perspective and rests on no self-importance.  “I don’t want to save the world, man,” he says. “I just want to make beer.”

Kevin grew up in Norfolk, and looks far too young to own a business. Himself the son of an entrepreneur, he worked and took a stake in his father’s auto parts chain, learning the anatomy and kinetics of small business. He studied at Radford and Old Dominion Universities, and worked for years as a Norfolk restaurant and beer distributor. During this time, Kevin cultivated a network of professional contacts in the Hampton Roads area that included bar owners, restaurateurs, and local leaders. He walked away from the experience convinced that a brewery would fill a void in Norfolk’s culinary offerings. After presenting a universally-lauded business plan to bankers and family members, Kevin secured a small group of investors. He had become a businessman, but he needed a craftsman to give his dream a heartbeat.

Chris O’Connor moved to Norfolk to work for Kevin from Northampton, Massachusetts, where he worked at a brewpub owned by his then-wife. Their divorce convinced him it was time for a change in pace. “I got fired from my marriage,” he says, “so I lost my job at the pub, too.” He left family, friends, and a host of proprietary recipes in Northampton to move to South Hampton Roads, but views his new situation in pragmatic terms.

“I have a job doing what I love to do,” he says. He and Kevin purchased all the necessary equipment from a seller in Rhode Island and, with the help of two tractor trailers, drove everything to Norfolk. The company suddenly had a brewmaster and a warehouse full of tanks, tubes, kegs, and kettles. In characteristic fashion, Kevin had almost singlehandedly assembled all the ingredients in one place, but he knew that any business venture involved financial logistics even more complex than finding 20-barrel tanks.

(Photo | Author)

The final addition to the mix was Adam Strach, Kevin’s cousin and former Ernst & Young accountant. Strach and his family recently moved to Norfolk from Arlington, and rather than accepting another corporate position, he elected to work as Kevin’s volunteer CFO while mulling his next career step. Unconcerned about the unpaid nature of the job, he cites Kevin’s infectious energy as one of the reasons he signed on, recalling that “Kevin came to me and basically said, ‘I want to start a brewery. Do I need money?’” He did, and Strach helped him find it. The CPA helps Kevin fundraise, secure loans, balance the books, and plan the brewery’s financial future. On Adam’s desk sits a Powerpoint screen shot with the words 5 Year Plan at the top.

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