Black Warrior’s Story

This adventure into opening the doors to our very own microbrewery began years before our November 2013 Grand Opening.  It’s a story of friendship, mountain biking and basement brewing. All four of our owners had homebrewed at some point in their journey to love the craft of brewing.  Jason Spikes, now our Head Brewer, had the most extensive history and passion for brewing.  The initial days of the unofficial Black Warrior Brewing actually occurred in his basement!

Jason Spikes met fellow owners Joe Fuller and Eric Hull while working at their then day-jobs at a tire manufacturing plant, and their friendship grew as they enjoyed mountain biking together.  While the dream of having a brewery was already in the back of their minds, it was during one of their annual biking trips in Chattanooga where this dream started to take form.  That fresh mountain air, the thrill of racing down the trails of Raccoon Mountain, and possibly a few too many IPA’s spawned the conversation that truly got the ball rolling on all four of us living out this dream.

That spring day in 2011 set our path that we would be focused on for the next 2 ½ years preparing for our grand opening.  In our initial days, there were long weekends spent brewing in Jason’s basement trying to perfect our recipes, during which our friends were lucky enough to have the opportunity to critique and help us to improve our beers.  We gained a lot of friends during that time, one of whom was Wayne Yarbrough who would eventually become our fourth member of the team. 

The search for the perfect location to build our dream was a long process and there were points at which we wondered if this dream would ever get off the ground, but then on a chilly day in November we found a little building in the heart of downtown Tuscaloosa that we instantly knew would be our home.  It may have been run down and ugly on the surface, but we knew there was beauty and potential just under that rough exterior.  

Thanksgiving week of 2012, we signed the lease to that old barbershop on University Boulevard and our dream started to become a reality.  With our combined engineering and construction backgrounds we knew that we needed to be completely hands-on in the process of turning this run-down shop into the brewery we had dreamed of and would be proud to call our own.

We spent every evening and weekend jack-hammering plaster off the walls, digging trench drains, pouring concrete, running electrical, building walls, planing & sanding our reclaimed wood bar top, piping in our 10bbl brew house, and finally brewing our inaugural batch of our signature Broad Street Brown.  Many beers were sweated out, occasional blood was shed and muscles were sore, but our hearts kept pushing us further towards our dream.  Opening day was almost a full year after we signed that lease and we were all nearing a point of exhaustion, but to pour those first beers to our satisfied customers made every part of our journey worth the effort.  

Make sure to stop by the brewery and tap room while you are on your travels through Tuscaloosa and share a cold beer with us.  We’re always happy to show you around and chat about the adventures of starting our very own microbrewery here at Black Warrior Brewing Company.  CHEERS!