A head of its time: for a fresh take on an ancient beverage, Red Oak Brewery marries modern manufacturing to time-honored recipes.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

It takes new equipment to brew old-fashioned beer in today's market. Ask Chris Buckley, who grew up in Germany and learned his trade in Munich, mecca for beer lovers. As the brewmaster at Red Oak Brewery LLC in Whitsett, he uses a $1 million custom-built system with a computerized control center worthy of a starship's bridge but a recipe that adheres to a 1516 Bavarian law regulating beer purity: nothing but malted barley, hops, water and yeast. "We're using modern technology to make a very traditional beer." The secret is in what Red Oak doesn't do.

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Its three lagers are unfiltered, unpasteurized and distributed only in North Carolina to make sure they're served fresh. "In Germany, every town used to have its own brewery, and beer was best when you were close enough to smell it coming out of the brewery's stack. Pasteurizing and filtering are relatively new--a hundred years old--but beer itself has been made for 5,000 years that we know of." Cold fermentation takes four to eight weeks, then the beer is kegged and kept refrigerated. "The only thing you gain by filtering and pasteurizing beer is shelf life. You remove the healthy benefits--B-complex vitamins, proteins, minerals--but most of all, the flavor is held back."

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Red Oak's roots go back to the late 1970s. The company grew out of a Greensboro restaurant, Franklin's Off Friendly, so-called because it was on a dirt street off Friendly Avenue near Guilford College. It morphed into a chain, and in February 1991, the original was remodeled and expanded into Red Oak Brew Pub, which began selling its beer to other places. "We were supplying 200 restaurants by 2001 and brewing around the clock." The brew pub expanded again, but with Red Oak on tap in more than 500 spots, work...