West Virginia's Newest Brewpub will be opening its doors on New Years Eve 2009. Located in Wardensville, WV, Lost River Brewing Co. is the vision of Owner and Brewmaster Scott Stambaugh. The Chicago Native who grew up in Florida and has been working in Washington DC for the past several years (in the Executive Office of the President of the United States no less) started looking in WV for some land to build a weekend getaway and fell in love with the Mountain State. He and his wife now call West Virginia home and Scott, along with Jesse his assistant brewer and jack of all trades have been tirelessly working towards the big NYE grand opening.

As usual when dealing with the buracracy that is the state ABCA, they will not be fully licenced to sell their beer on the night of the grand opening, but will be offering free tastings of the four beers that will make up their initial lineup: Lost River Cream Ale, Amber Braun (a German Altbier), Amaranth ( a Raspberry Ale), and Valhalla (7.5% abv Spiced Beer).

Stambaugh has honed his brewing skills through many years of home brewing. All of the inital lineup of beers are his own homebrewed creations. A couple of them have even won awards in comptitions in the DC area that were put on by the Wort Hogs, a DC area homebrewers club, and at the DC Iron Mug Compition which is a beer compition that is similar to the Food Networks Iron Chef where the contestants are given an ingredent and have to use it in a recipe.

Lost River will be starting production on a 15 gallon brewing system very similar to the one Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head started on. While this may seem small, rest assured that Scott decided this would be his best option because it will allow him to brew more often and, like Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head, experiment with recipies more. It will also allow him to make the jump from Homebrewer to Pro Brewer a little easier. When the time is right they plan to up the production and hope to widely distribute their beer in the future, but for the time being they just want to brew quality beer that will appeal to everyone from Beer Geeks to Wine Snobs and everyone inbetween.

Lost River Brewing Co.

155 West Main Street

Wardensville, WV

304-874-3448

www.lostriverbrewing.com

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