Features
Style Weekly profiles the growth of Midnight Brewery
Brewer Trae Cairns began a humble operation as a homebrewer, later turning his passion into profit with a brewery operation just west of Short Pump.
The directions are easy. Get off Interstate 64 at Exit 173 — and if you can’t follow the conspicuous signs to Midnight, you probably shouldn’t be thinking about visiting a brewery.*
Located in eastern Goochland County near Rockville, Midnight Brewery is the brainchild of Trae Cairns. Like many of his counterparts at other craft breweries, Cairns began as a home brewer. When the smell made his wife kick him out of their kitchen, Cairns knew he had to find another way to continue with his passion. “At that point,” he says, “things got a lot bigger.”
He began the brewery in 2011, and officially launched in 2012, producing Midnight’s first batch, Banana Pancakes beer, a maple wheat beer brewed in collaboration with Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, which had opened the previous year.
Photo: Scott Elmquist/Style Weekly
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