A DASHING SUCCESS.

• Author: Mims, Bryan
• Position: TOWN SQUARE: Fuquay-Varina

TWO BOOM TOWNS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE: BEER KEEPS FUQUAY-VARINA'S GROWTH FLOWING.

It's a quarter till 2 on a Tuesday afternoon, and 32-year-old Blake Craft is going for another Steak Cake Stout, a creamy-headed ale with the hue of black coffee. For a beer lover, the sign outside The Mill is seductive: "N.C. Craft Beer $3.50 All Day Tuesday." On this muggy afternoon, laptops are open on the bar, earbuds are in, amber splashes of grain fill and refill glasses, and a modern, mellow beat pours out of the speakers.

"The price is right," Craft chuckles with his freshly poured brew. "This is a really cool hangout. I can bring my wife here, who doesn't drink beer. She gets the coffee, I get the beer, and we have a good time."

The Mill is a coffee shop and bar that serves only North Carolina-crafted beer and wine. It occupies a corner at South Main and Trade streets in the Fuquay section of Fuquay-Varina, a town with a hyphenated name that inspired local boosters to coin a catchy little motto --"A Dash More." (And for the record, it's pronounced few-kway vuh-REE-nuh.)

It's an apt description, considering the town seems to have one more of everything: One more brewery, one more spot to indulge your sweet tooth, one more pizza place, even one more downtown. Here's the deal with the dash --Fuquay-Varina, 18 miles south of Raleigh, is essentially two towns in one: Fuquay to the south and Varina to the north, each with its own central business district.

The two original towns, Fuquay Springs and Varina, merged in 1963 after sharing a long agricultural history. Between the two, they had five tobacco warehouses throughout much of the 20th century. But the days of floppy leaves littering the roadsides and the auctioneer chanting rhythmically among the aromatic bundles have long faded.

One thing binding the two town hubs together these days--aside from U.S. 401 and the railroad--is beer. Not the kind from St. Louis or Milwaukee or anything referred to as cerveza, but good local brews. Even the staunchest of teetotalers can appreciate the energy a craft-beer pub infuses into a community, as evidenced by the millennials swilling stouts and pale ales at The Mill on a Tuesday afternoon.

The homespun suds began flowing around here in 2008 when Mark Doble, who spent 15 years tinkering with computers for Hewlett Packard, took up beer brewing full time in an old airplane hangar. He opened the Aviator Tap House inside the old Varina train depot, keeping the original...