A Year in Beer: Sowing and reaping at Burial Beer Co.

On Jan. 1, Christopher Arbor and his friends pledged to visit one Asheville brewery each week for all of 2025 in the order that they opened then share the experience with Mountain Xpress readers. To read about their recent visit to Wicked Weed Brewing, visit avl.mx/ekv. 

I liked them before they were cool. 

Flashback to 2013: I was wandering around the dilapidated buildings on the South Slope with my young kid on my hip, following a lead from a fellow preschool parent on the new Burial Beer Co. It didn’t yet have a sign, but I finally discovered it between two vacant buildings. 

When I walked in, one of the three owners, Jess Reiser, was behind the bar pouring beers with her infant son strapped to her — about as Asheville an image as I can imagine. When I got to the front of the line, I introduced myself, explained that our kids went to preschool together, ordered my beer and offered to hang out with her kid while she worked. 

She looked at me, in a half-second assessing my sketchiness vs. wholesomeness and calculating my worthiness as a babysitter. Then she handed me one of the best beers I’d ever had and one of the cutest kids you’ve ever seen. 

I later learned that Burial had planned to do a quiet soft opening to get its footing with its 1-barrel brewing system. But word got out, and the taproom was mobbed. In those early days, the team would brew all week then open on the weekend until the beer ran out — often by midday on Saturday.

Fast-forward to 2025: On a recent Wednesday morning, I delivered a talk to the Asheville Rotary Club about our yearlong brewery crawl, and that evening several members joined us for a beer at Burial. 

Arriving there is a different experience these days. The seeds planted by Jess and her fellow co-owners, husband Doug Reiser and brewer Tim Gormley, have taken root and bloomed. The original Collier Avenue location has expanded in all directions — including up, with the additions of Eulogy music venue and VISUALS rooftop bar. There’s also a bottle shop now, and the former scrapyard behind the taproom has transformed into a stellar outdoor space. 

Burial’s Forestry Camp near Biltmore Village now handles most of the brewing and offers fantastic dining in a renovated Civilian Conservation Corps facility. There are also outposts in Charlotte and Raleigh. The original 1-barrel system has grown to three brewhouses totaling 135 barrels. 

Gormley continues to produce extraordinary beers often named after tools — Thresher, Scythe, Shadowclock, Skillet — or long, dramatic musings, such as “Things We See In The Shadows Are Reminders of the Unforgotten.” 

But don’t think Burial takes itself too seriously. Its website features a beer name generator. Based on your name and birth month, you’ll get hilarious creations such as “Forlorn Despondence on a Dispatch of Maelstrom.”

Gormley says passion, a drive to contribute to the community and the vision to curate talented creatives have helped foster Burial’s growth. “If we stand out, I’d like to think that it’s due to our tireless efforts to infuse all that we do with intention and to pay very close attention to the details,” he says. 

In December, Burial launched the Manifest Eternity Program, a series of events and collaborations aimed at supporting breweries recovering from Tropical Storm Helene through the N.C. Craft Brewers Foundation. Gormley says the disaster ultimately made Burial’s team closer and stronger. “There has been more buy-in,” he says. “The passion for what we do has been amplified.” 

We gather at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays. Join us if you like. You can email me at yearinbeerasheville@gmail.com or just show up.

March 12 — One World Brewing downtown

March 19  — Pisgah Brewing Co.