Tallulah Brewing is an Alabama Maker mixing passion with business
Tallulah Brewing Co. in downtown Jasper is a family owned business serving hand-crafted beers, cider and wine. (Brittany Faush / Alabama NewsCenter)
Tallulah Brewing Company (Jasper)
The Makers: Drew Gilbert and Josh Bagwell
Family is important to Tallulah Brewing Company. If you doubt that, just talk to any of the seven family members who own it.
“My brother-in-law (Josh Bagwell) and I are the managing members,” said Drew Gilbert. “He runs the manufacturing side and I run the business side, but we have five other investors: my brother, my brother-in-law’s father and grandfather and my two aunts that live in Colorado. We send them updates and they’re pretty nice investors so far. They really haven’t demanded much out of us.”
Tallulah Brewing started in 2016 out of a passion for hand-crafted beer.
“We were all craft beer lovers, and my brother-in-law got really good at it, so we started talking about it,” Gilbert said.
Tallulah Brewing Company connects past with passion from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Discussions got serious when the city of Jasper adopted the Main Street economic development program, providing the family the incentives they needed to start a brewery.
“A lot of family members started giving us money to open the brewery,” Gilbert said. “Before we knew it, we were really opening a brewery.”
Tallulah Brewing features up to 16 beers on tap: four core beers and 10-12 rotating selections brewed every Friday.
“We do stuff with fruit in it, we age stuff in whiskey barrels, we do everything in between, and I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of: the quality we’ve been able to attain.”
The brewery also offers homemade cider and wines.
“We try really hard to make something good, something unique,” Gilbert said. “Jasper was ready for something like this.”
Gilbert said they picked the name Tallulah in honor of the old Tallulah Hotel in nearby Cordova and designed the company’s logo after the hotel’s tile floor entrance. The brewery also pays homage to two local natives: Tallulah Bankhead, a Hollywood actress, and her father, Congressman William B. Bankhead, who served as speaker of the House in the U.S. House of Representatives. A picture of Tallulah hangs in the foyer, while one of the four core beers, The Gavel Porter, was named after the congressman.
What’s next for Tallulah Brewing Company? Gilbert said they are in the middle of an expansion project that will triple the tap room’s production capacity and add a canning line to package their beers for selling in stores. He said they hope to have the expansion projects complete by early 2020.
The Product: 16 taps, wine and cider
Take Home: Packaged beers coming early 2020
Tallulah Brewery
1804 Fourth Avenue South, Jasper, AL 35501
Tallulah Brewery can be found online at tallulahbrewing.com, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
