RAR: Big-time brewery with a small-town mentality

When visitors to the Eastern Shore were on their way to the beach a few years ago, they likely would have never considered taking a quick detour to downtown Cambridge.

Most of the buildings were vacant and many businesses there were struggling due in part to the recession that hit in latter part of the last decade.

But Cambridge is on the rebound in 2015. Businesses and restaurants have popped up and are once again attracting locals and visitors away from Route 50 and into the town.

The business in Cambridge that is perhaps the most symbolic of its rebound even has the word "revival" in its name. ReAle Revival, a two-year old brewery in Cambridge, is allegorical to the town's recovery and to the restoration of the craft-brewing industry.

"Me and my business partner were born and raised here in Cambridge," said Chris Brohawn, co-owner of RAR. "We saw what some of the other restaurants downtown were doing that are owned by some of our friends and we just wanted to add to that to help bring downtown back.

"That's why we did it."

Nearly two years after opening up on Poplar Street in the heart of Cambridge, Brohawn, co-owner J.T. Merryweather and head brewer Randy Mills have seen their beer served all around the Eastern Shore and also in Annapolis, Baltimore and the Washington D.C. area.

The brewery has become a popular detour for those traveling to the beach and because of the success, expansion is coming.

RAR recently purchased a building right around the corner from the brewery that will house operations for canning its craft brews.

"We're about two weeks away from that building being ready," Brohawn said. "Our expansion is right around the corner, and eventually we would like to take over the whole corner. I don't see us ever leaving this place."

As long as Brohawn, Merryweather and Mills' brewery is there, locals and visitors will always have a reason to visit downtown Cambridge.

"RAR is what brought me back to Cambridge before I started working here," said Ryan Liszewski, an Eastern Shore resident and RAR employee. "I love trying new beers, and when I heard there was a brewery here I had to come check it out. RAR is what really sold me.

"Now I know about all the other great businesses and restaurants that are within walking distance from here."

Old Cambridge nostalgia

RAR started in August 2013, but the owners needed a building.

Brohawn and Merryweather began looking around, but didn't venture too far away from their hometown. Both graduates of Cambridge-South Dorchester High School, Brohawn in 1999 and Merryweather in 2001, they wanted to brew close to home.

"Being in downtown Cambridge was the only option," Brohawn said. "I would have never done this if it was somewhere else."

The third building that they came across sparked feelings of nostalgia for Brohawn. It was at 504 Poplar St. in the downtown area, and when he was a kid it was a pool hall and place where he and his grandmother would come to play on the pinball machine.

According to Brohawn, the pool hall was there from the 1950s all the way until about 2004. Between those times it had also been a bowling alley and place for high-priced card games — and was also known for tasty hot dogs.

"At the height of their business they were selling like, 150 hot dogs a day out here," Brohawn said.

New owners took over the building in 2004, but didn't last long and left in 2006. Other businesses were in and out of the building, and when Brohawn and Merryweather stumbled upon the place in their search, it had been vacant for a few years.

"We didn't even know it was for sale," Brohawn said. "We bought it, came in and ripped this place apart and turned it into what you see now. We tore out a bunch of wood and plaster that was covering the walls and we hand-chiseled up the tile floor — and that sucked."

Upon opening the brewery, Brohawn said they had "about $600 in the bank."

Their first month of business would make or break them.

"We basically opened up with hopes of being successful enough in that first month to be able to support us," Brohawn said. "We were bartending during the day and brewing and fixing this place up during the night. It turned out that we were pretty successful, and we opened up the tap room."

Brohawn wanted gaming to be a part of the tap room atmosphere as an ode to the old pool hall, but pool tables would take up too much space. Instead, he and his business partner settled on a shuffleboard table and an arcade machine that featured games from the 1980s.

"He kind of saved the day"

RAR started brewing on-site in March 2014, but while Brohawn handled the construction and Merryweather managed the marketing and sales, they needed to someone to take care of the thing that would make the business work: the beer.

Randy Mills entered the scene just as the brewhouse was nearing its completion.

"At the time I was working for Evolution (Craft Brewing Company in Salisbury) and I was just looking to get back into a smaller brewery and have the opportunity to do more with recipe development and be more hands on," Mills said. "It was perfect timing."

Mills graduated from James M. Bennett High School and had always loved good beer, but the idea of making it didn't enter his head until he had a taste of a beer from Dogfish Head.

"When I was in my early 20s I had a Dogfish 90 minute IPA. Ironically it wasn't locally, but it was at a bar in Brooklyn," Mills said. "I really enjoyed that and it was different from anything I had before, so that got the wheels turning in my head a bit about beer and I started out home brewing like a lot of people do, and then I started working for Evolution."

With Mills on board, each member of the three-headed machine that makes RAR work could focus on their own things.

"He kind of saved the day," Brohawn said.

For Mills, he could focus on making good beer and coming up with unique recipes.

"Everything that surrounds the process is interesting because you have the artistic side of creating a recipe and then you have the side of science with the yeast," Mills said. "And you meet great people while you're doing it. I love my job."

Not a one-beer brewery

RAR has four main beers and considers the Nanticoke Nectar its flagship brew. It's an India Pale Ale with an alcohol-by-volume of 7.4 percent.

"That's the first one we brewed here," Brohawn said.

Visitors to RAR can watch the brewing process while sipping their beer in the tap room. It's a simple but delicate cycle. On first glance, they might notice the large tanks labeled with names.

All the tanks are named after the mothers and wives of the people who helped build RAR. The last tank that the beer reaches before it hits the kegs, also known as the brite tank, is "Brenna," named after Mills' wife.

"That's my wife," he said. "She takes care of business."

Liszewski isn't sure which RAR beer is his absolute favorite, but for main lines he likes the Bucktown Brown, an American brown ale with an ode to Cambridge's Bucktown Road in its name, and from the seasonal lines, he likes the currently out-of-stock Grapefruit Nectar.

"Both are really solid choices," he said. "If the Grapefruit Nectar isn't your thing, the original Nectar is still an excellent choice."

Since Mills has been on board, he has been able to experiment with recipes, and the Grapefruit Nectar was one of his creations that came out of trying new things.

"As you grow as a brewer, you learn about the different complexities of yeast and the different smells and aromas from different hops, and it gives you plenty of ideas to try different things," Mills said. "Obviously we sell a lot of the Nanticoke Nectar, but we don't want to box ourselves in and only sell one beer. We want to try different things and keep our minds open."

Mills said he also has plans to try barrel-aging beer and is also looking into the possibility of RAR launching its own sour beer. Currently on tap RAR has a Habanero Nectar, a pepper IPA and an Oaked Nectar — an IPA made with French Oak wood chips aged in rum.

"We don't want to be a one-trick pony," Mills said.

Drunken Tots

One of the ways RAR is different from other breweries is its choices for food. The idea for a small, simple menu came from finding a hot dog steamer, left behind by the pool hall owners.

Once again, the pool hall nostalgia made its presence felt.

"We had the hot dog machine, so we originally just did that as a throwback to the pool hall, but then the health department caught on to that and forced us to get a food license, and we didn't know we needed one," Brohawn said. "But we got one and we said hey, why don't we just offer a small menu?"

The "Drunken Tots" have become a popular choice on the menu and Liswewski said it pairs well with any of the beers. The fried snack consists of tater tots topped with cheese, sour cream, scallions and bacon.

"It's been done before, but we put our twist on it and it goes really good with beer," Brohawn said. "We're not some five-star restaurant, but we offer enough stuff to keep butts in seats and so people can eat good food while they drink."

Canning and expanding

In September 2014, RAR started distributing its beer to west of the Bay Bridge, and it can now be found in bars in Baltimore, D.C. and Annapolis.

"Word of mouth has been great for us," Brohawn said.

Soon the canning line will open up, which will make it easier to distribute and spread the word about RAR. The building it purchased for canning is just around the corner and was a Dodge showroom in the 1950s that has been vacant for a number of years. At one time it had large, glass showroom windowns, but thowe were destroyed in the Cambridge riot in 1963.

But Brohawn and Mills assure that expanding and adding a canning line won't make them too big for Cambridge, and they won't be leaving the Mid-Shore town anytime soon.

"We all have this mentality of like, we don't want to be a factory that is pumping out beer," Mills said. "This is fun for us. We want to keep it local, we want to keep it downtown and we want to make this a tourist destination."

Two years in and with a line of cans on the way, what's next for RAR?

"Man, I don't even know," Brohawn said. "It's moving so fast. We'll probably hit the Delaware beaches and Northern Virginia next, but we want to make sure that we have Maryland and the Eastern Shore taken care of first."

tnortham@dmg.gannett.com

410-845-4643

@primetimeMitch