UnCapped: Resident Culture Brewing Co. in Charlotte, NC

Nov. 16—In this episode of the UnCapped podcast, host Chris Sands talks with sales and distribution manager Jon Eberhart and lead sales rep Mikey Foster at Resident Culture Brewing Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina, about the history of Resident Culture, what they have going on now, and why beer in North Carolina is so good. Here is an excerpt of their conversation.

UnCapped: What wave of craft beer were you — 3.0? There's a whole group of breweries that are five years old.

Jon Eberhart: It depends on where you start with, what waves. We definitely took off when hazy IPAs were starting to spread out of the Northeast. That definitely helped us.

UnCapped: You're in a very strong class. And you have multiple locations, don't you?

Eberhart: Correct. We have our OG facility, where all of our production is done here, distribution done here, in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Central Avenue. Then, our second location is just a taproom, but we also have coffee and tacos, and that's in the South End neighborhood.

UnCapped: I hear that tacos and beer go together well.

Eberhart: I'm not gonna argue that.

UnCapped: Who are the founders of Resident Culture?

Eberhart: The founders are Phil and Amanda McLamb. They are married. They come from a business finance background. On the brewing side of things, Chris Tropeano worked at a brewery in Austin, Texas, but more recently came to us from Russian River. He was the lead brewer at their brewpub. He brewed all their experimental, rotational, one-off stuff.

UnCapped: [Your website] says "The Guilded Cellar" [as another location].

Eberhart: That's our private event space.

UnCapped: Ah. So, it's like, 2 1/2 locations.

Eberhart: Yeah. It's under one roof.

UnCapped: There are some places in Frederick like that, too, where there's a restaurant upstairs and they have a separate name. Where does the name Resident Culture come from?

Eberhart: We're really big, from the start, on community. Whether it be resident of the world, resident of your neighborhood, or anything in between. And culture is another word for yeast. So it's kind of a blend of two things we're passionate about.

UnCapped: Resident Culture's specialties are, more or less, IPAs, lagers and mixed culture, right?

Eberhart: Yeah, definitely when we started. It was close to two years before we did our first stout, and I know that we're very fortunate to have good feedback and people to follow us for that as well.

UnCapped: Why are there so many good breweries in North Carolina?

Eberhart: Why not? One thing that's come to the forefront, the more traveling I do — and I know Mikey can agree with this — is North Carolina as a whole and the community we have. More or less, we're collaborators and not competitors. A brewery hit me up yesterday wanting 15 one-ways — they were out of them and wanted to buy them, and I was like, "Yes. Absolutely." Whatever you need, whenever you need it, we're just there for each other. You know, a rising tide raises all ships.

Mikey Foster: Also, North Carolina's bar is so high already, you can't really decide to just jump into the beer market if you don't know what you're doing. We got 60 breweries here in Charlotte alone, and 95% of them are really good beer. Asheville started it, but we've got Wilmington, Raleigh ... the bar is set pretty high.

UnCapped: It's not even one city with really good breweries. You have three distinct cities that have world-class breweries in them.

Foster: Yeah. We got 360 breweries in the state now or more.

This excerpt has been edited for space and clarity. Listen to the full podcast at fnppodcasts.com/uncapped. Got UnCapped news? Email csands@newspost.com.