Steel Hands Brewing in Cayce is quickly turning into a local favorite for both their amazing beer and for all the ways they give back to the community. We caught up with Marketing & Business Development Director, Ashley Lambert, to learn more about one of our favorite local breweries.
Steel Hands is an urban oasis located in the industrial area of Cayce. Their location sports a gigantic open modern-industrial taproom and a huge outdoor seating area surrounded by trees complete with an outdoor bar. There’s even an outdoor stage which regularly features live bands. The brewery opened December 1st, 2018 and, as Ashley said, “We like to run before we walk here.” This is very apparent from not only the sheer size of the facility, but the fact that 6-packs of Steel Hands canned beer are already on retail shelves.
Ashley’s husband, Scott Lambert, is one of the owners of Steel Hands and is also the architect who designed the entire facility with his wife’s help. Scott has worked on multiple breweries on a smaller scale in the past and saw an opportunity here in Columbia to create something bigger. Ashley explained, “We travel a lot – we see a lot of breweries and we thought it would be a great opportunity to take all of our experiences and things we love about craft breweries and bring it together in a way that we wanted to do it. It’s kind of grown into this larger than life production. We were like, ‘where are we going to find enough land to do what we want to do?’ Because breweries nowadays, you can’t just have a back of house and expect to be the biggest best thing. You’ve got to have a tap room and cool brewery equipment – you’ve got to have the outdoor component, and live music. And we knew we wanted big, so we had to create a destination. We ended up finding this piece of land and everything here was built from scratch. My husband designed it. We’re very proud of it.”
Ashley and Scott wanted to embrace their industrial location and the CMC Steel factory across the street was a huge inspiration. Ashley said, “We knew we wanted to have steel in the name somewhere based off the location, and they make one of the largest rebar in the world. They’re sending this stuff to New York and building skyscrapers out of it, so that’s where the hand holding the rebar comes from. My husband and I love to build things. We’ve built every table outside, all the tables inside. He’s an architect – he does things with his hands so one day we were like, ‘why don’t we just call it Steel Hands?’ And it stuck. It also pays homage to all the hard working industries around us too. Part of our mission is we really want to foster creativity, give back to the community, and really support the local movement.”
And give back to the community they do. Big time. Recently, Habitat for Humanity reached out to Steel Hands to host their Boss of the Toss cornhole tournament. When Ashley found out Habitat for Humanity also happened to be doing a build in Cayce she said, “that’s way too easy, we want to be a part of that.” Eleven of their employees volunteered to help build a house for the organization. According to Ashley, “All of our guys wanted to get involved. We ended up picking a day and eleven of us went out there and just helped them build for 4 hours straight. They were great to work with.”
Steel Hands also hosts a monthly pint fundraiser where $1.00 of every pint served in the taproom is donated to charities such as Camp Chemo, Children’s Miracle Network, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the list goes on. They also do a lot under the radar with charities such as making “swag bag” donations filled with Steel Hands merchandise.
Steel Hands is also set to host a very exciting charity concert September 11th, 2019 that will benefit the Courage Center for addiction and substance abuse. The concert will feature many singer-songwriters from Nashville, some of which have written songs for all the hot country stars – not to name names, but Jason Aldean is one of many. No big deal there. It will be a ticketed event and they are expecting anywhere from 500-1000 people. The tickets are $50 for general admission and $200 for VIP. All proceeds from the event are going to charity.
If that’s not enough to get you in the door, let’s talk about the beer. It’s really, really, REALLY good. Ashley gives all the credit to their Master Brewer, Doug Smith. “Our Brewmaster has a degree in biology and he also has a Masters in brewing. He’s brewed anywhere from Colorado, to Texas, to California. He and his wife actually moved here just for this opportunity and they’re getting ready to have a baby. We wouldn’t be where we are today without him.”
When asked what sets Steel Hands beer apart from the other craft breweries around town, Ashley said it is all about the experience: “People just love the beer. The coffee lager – made with local, Loveland Coffee – is obviously something that really differentiates us. No one else really, except maybe Catawba, has something similar with their Evening Joe. You come here and don’t expect this to be in this location. It’s very industrial, which a lot of breweries are, but I feel like we go a step above in some ways. The architecture is really cool. We also have a lot of highly drinkable beers. That was a big part of our mission for people to come and have more than one to sip on. We do a lot for the community so that sets us apart too. We’ve got plans to grow. We also centrifuge our beer. It’s a huge selling point for us for our distribution. It basically allows you to make the beer as clear or hazy as you want without adding oxygen. The machine actually spins at 11,000 rpms. All of our beer goes through our centrifuge before it goes to the bright tank so we get the same beer every time. That’s a huge deal to us. We have a lot of levels of quality control.” Ashley also added, “I think we’re one of the only breweries here that has a lab.”
Steel Hands currently cans their Coffee Lager, Tropical IPA, and Golden Ale. They plan to add their Punch Clock Pilsner to the lineup next and have hopes to start canning their Raspberry Lemonade by next Spring. We asked Ashley about her favorite brews and she said, “I always lean towards the Coffee Lager, but my second favorite is the Raspberry Lemonade. If you don’t know what you want to commit a whole pint to, they’ll give you a little splash. And those are free. So we want you to be happy with your beer. We also do flights on Fridays.”
So there you go – incredible beer, amazing atmosphere, good food, and great people over there at Steel Hands. Make this not-so-little destination next on your to do list. You will not regret it. Steel Hands is located at 2350 Foreman St, Cayce. Love Local!