8: Making The Bible Belt Wet

Today, Asheville proudly advertises itself as “Beer City USA,” but in the early 1980s North Carolina was a ruby red Bible belt state with very restrictive alcohol laws. Then a German immigrant named Uli Bennewitz naively decided that the Outer Banks was a great place to open a brewery – because they didn’t have any. Never mind that he chose a dry county in a town with a teetotaling mayor. North Carolinians, however, learned not to get in between a Bavarian and his beer. Although he couldn’t even vote, Uli spearheaded revolutionary legislation that opened North Carolina to becoming the most important brewing center in the south. We also learn how Uli became the only brewery in the US to be both investigated by the CIA and required to have a terrorism plan.