Carolina dreamin'.

• Author: Schulz, Max

A German immigrant opens a brew pub on Roanoke Island - and lives to tell the tale.

Roanoke Island, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, hasn't always been hospitable to immigrants. In 1587 a group of British settlers sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh landed there. Three years later, the colony had disappeared without a trace.

The climate for newcomers was appreciably less hostile by 1986, when German immigrant Uli Bennewitz started a brew pub there. Yet he encountered one obstacle after another, including jealous monopolists, archaic laws, bizarre federal regulations, and local suspicions. His story illustrates the unnecessary hardships that entrepreneurs face even when they are ultimately successful.

When Bennewitz decided to open a microbrewery and Bavarian restaurant in Manteo, Roanoke Island's largest town, the craft beer craze had barely begun, and he expected the difficulty of cultivating a market. But he never anticipated the regulatory and social hassles. "If I had had any idea of what I would have to go through, and still be going through," he says, "I just wouldn't have done it."

From the beginning, the deck was stacked against the Weeping Radish (named for a snack served in German beer halls). North Carolina law did not allow breweries to sell customers beer made on the premises. Brewers could sell only to wholesalers, who in turn would sell to retailers. The purpose of this rule was to check the power of large-volume brewers, but over time it created a group of powerful wholesalers.

With the naivete of someone from another country, Bennewitz set out to change the law. He met with a representative of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control board, and together they drafted a simple bill that would allow small breweries to sell beer directly to the public. This would permit Bennewitz to bypass the wholesalers and sell his own beer in the Weeping Radish's restaurant and adjoining pub. The state senator for Manteo, sensing economic opportunity knocking on his districts door, gladly agreed to sponsor the bill.

Not so fast, said the wholesalers, who sent their lobbyist to find out how much beer the Weeping Radish planned to brew. The wholesalers wouldn't sign off on the bill unless it set a limit low enough to protect their monopoly. New to the business of brewing beer, Bennewitz had no idea what quantity he would make. He called his brother in Germany, who had arranged for him to buy and ship the necessary equipment to America, and asked him...