Edmunds Oast is doing big things in beer and in the community. We caught up with EO’s General Manager, Devin Marquardt, and Director of Group Operations, Timmons Pettigrew, to learn more about one of Charleston’s favorite breweries.
Because the original Edmund’s Oast was so well received they wanted to bring that experience to other parts of the country and Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company was born. As Timmons put it, “All the beer we make at the original spot is sold over the counter or served in growlers. So that beer has no distribution. People can love it and drink it but they can’t take it home.”
Edmund’s Oast Brewing has quickly become a local favorite in town as well as across the state. Most notably, their incredible line of sours has scratched a major itch in the state’s beer scene. When asked about why they chose to focus on sours, Timmons said, “That was not intentional. That was more like — let’s try and do a fruited sour – and it was really well received.” The sours rotate with new flavors thrown in to the mix to see how they do. The Cherry Pineapple is out now and Apricot Peach, Blackberry Raspberry, Passionfruit (next up), and hopefully Sour Flower are set to return. A new flavor, Mango Strawberry, will be out soon as well. They currently have their base sour on tap and we highly recommend it. This unfruited brew is the basis for all their amazing sours and you can taste the nuances of the house-cultured lactobacillus that are normally eaten by the added fruit.
Another way Edmund’s Oast stands out is their unique beer names. Devin says Brewmaster Cameron Read told him that, if you make something, you get to name it. Thus, the most popular beer in the taproom was created:
“When I started with the company in March of 2017, 6 months before we opened this place, I said Cameron, all of my friends drink Miller Lite. What are we going to make to please the masses? And he said, ‘I’ll put together a premium blonde ale for you,’ and that was the birth of Something Cold. So we made this blonde ale that is to the best of my knowledge our most popular beer in the taproom. Number two most popular in the world for us and number one in the taproom. It’s a flagship beer now. Cameron called it Something Cold, like just give me something cold.”
Besides making incredible local beer, Edmund’s Oast is also deeply immersed in the community. When asked what his favorite thing about being a Charleston brewery is, Devin said,
“My favorite part is the camaraderie that it brings us amongst the community because there are so many other breweries in town. Many of them, like the big guys like Westbrook and Holy City, have set such a standard for beer in Charleston and now we’re part of that community. So it’s welcomed us in and part of the vision for me of this tap room is to make a community gathering place – so not just for beer drinkers, not just for people that want good food, but for anybody for any reason to come be a part of our community. I think the Charleston beer culture community has really helped us become that.”
All the camaraderie and sense of community among Charleston breweries is great and means we get to enjoy a variety of amazing local beer, but what keeps Edmund’s Oast at the top of the brewing pack? Devin says it’s all about quality: “In my personal opinion, the standard for quality outweighs anything else. So even if it’s demanding that we produce something like a New England IPA, we’re not just going to put one out unless it’s up to our standards and our standards are set fairly high I believe. Not only for the quality of our beer, but for the food and the service in our taproom as well.”
Timmons adds: “We don’t sacrifice quality for anything. You definitely need to keep your head down and do it. We’re part of the community, we have friends that brew at other breweries, but the goal is not to be better than ‘X company.’ We have to do our thing in our lane and hopefully people dig it. Everyone is doing something different and we want to celebrate all of it.”
This year, Devin, his brother, some of his teammates from the brewery, and a group from the Charleston disc golf community came together over their disc golf obsession and created Putts for Purpose – a charity disc golf league. “I feel that my job as the GM of the taproom is not only to run the taproom but to help grow the business and, to do that, we try to find an outlet for anything that would provide more business to the area. We have this great astroturf out there and my brother was like, let’s round up a disc golf league!” Due to obvious size constraints and to make it accessible to everyone, the league is a 6 hole marksman-style putting league. Each player gets four discs, each slightly smaller than a regular frisbee. Players have four shots to make it into the basket and the baskets get successively harder as the numbers go up (i.e. hole two is harder than hole one). There’s an novice, amateur, and pro league and players can pick whichever they would like to participate in. There are also lots of opportunities to win prizes as scores are tallied at the end of each league and prizes are handed out for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and last place.
If you are interested in participating in Putts for Purpose, there is a $5.00 buy in – $3.00 of which is donated to charity, $1.00 goes to support the Charleston disc golf community, and the remaining $1.00 is kept to support Putts for Purpose’s continued operation. Charitable donations from the first season went to Leukemia and Lymphoma research and awareness and, for upcoming seasons, the goal is to support one charity per league. The league meets every Wednesday during the Spring, Fall, and Winter. The Spring league just ended and Fall will start up in September.
Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. is located at 1505 King St. You can also find all of their current releases at both Bottles locations. Love Local!