North Carolina is an agricultural state. Evidence is present in any grocery store in the state. The aisles are lined with many products carrying the ‘Goodness Grows in North Carolina’ label. Everything from corn, sweet potatoes, apples, soybeans, pork, turkey, chicken and even some barbecue sauces bear the mark. Yet, while scanning the tailored end of the beer cooler, the stamp of homegrown authenticity is nowhere to be found. Even so, the state has a fluent market of breweries. Scattered across the state from Black Mountain to Kill Devil Hills, there are a total of 32 breweries.

Beer brewed in North Carolina is not considered an agricultural product because one of the main ingredients in beer — hops — is not a native plant to the area and is not widely grown in the state. Most hops are grown in Washington, Oregon or Northern California because the vine-like plant requires rich, well-drained soil, abundant moisture and an average temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Carolina Brewing Company is a key distributor in the Triangle area and has been around for almost 11 years. Three friends took risks, followed their dreams and began brewing from their basement, becoming business partners.

What began on the stove in their kitchen with a five-gallon kettle transpired into a three-tiered platform with propane burners in their basement. Brothers Greg and John Shuck, along with friend Joe Zonin all went to Cornell University and started off as home brewers with a growing love for brewing beer. In 1992 the friends decided it was time to transform the passion-filled hobby into a career.

“We decided to move and open up the business, and we picked the southeast first — more or less it was the one place that didn’t have many breweries,” Joe Zonin said. “When we made this decision the city of Seattle had thirteen breweries within the city limits and the whole state of North Carolina had two breweries, and that was a huge part of the decision.”

It took them two-and-a-half years to open up the brewery, and in July of 1995 they had their first sale at 42nd St. Oyster Bar in downtown Raleigh serving their Carolina Pale Ale. The first sale marked the beginning of Carolina Brewing Company and the start of a new market for the many fresh beers to be produced.

Beer, unlike some wines, does not acquire a better taste as it ages. A beer is at it freshest when it is bottled at the brewery. Wine gets its alcohol from grapes where as the alcohol found in beer comes from malted barley.

“There are four main ingredients, water, malted barley, hops and yeast,” Zonin said. “Malted barley provides body and color; hops for bitterness as well as aroma.”

Any sweetness that is in the beer as well as any alcohol comes from the malted barley. The brewing process takes the sugar out of the grain and converts it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

“When the barley is dried it’s basically roasted, it’s kennel-dried. It goes from almost tan in color to jet-black in color. So like a two-hour roast at 200 degrees makes a very light-colored grain where as an eight-hour roast at 350 degrees is going to make for a much darker-colored grain,” Zonin said.

The type of beer produced depends on the roast of the barley and the blend. “For a darker beer we use a darker grain,” Zonin said. “Obviously, for something like our Pale Ale or our Spring Bock, we are using a light-colored grain, mostly light-colored barley, made from just two different types.” This unique blend of barleys and hops is what gives a beer its distinctive depth and flavor. Different techniques used in the brewing process, as well as different types of yeast, are used to classify what kind of beer is produced.

There are two major categories of beer: ales and lagers. Ales include pale ales, nut-brown ales, porters and stouts. Pilsners, bocks and many festival or seasonal beers are lagers. Over the past 10 years Carolina Brewing Company has exposed North Carolina to examples of such beers. Its current lineup boasts three regular brews. The original Carolina Pale Ale started it all. It is a basic, American ale with a clean taste and medium-light body. The Carolina India Pale Ale is higher in alcohol content than the Pale Ale and has a heavier-hopped taste. The Carolina Nut Brown Ale is dark brown ale with a malted, dry nutty taste and caries a distinct aftertaste.

Carolina Brewery puts out four seasonal brews a year. The Carolina Summer Ale is a simple ale with a light color and taste. For the fall, there is an appropriate and distinct Carolina Oktoberfest Lager, which has a smooth, satisfying taste.

In the winter, the Carolina Winter Stout competes with Guinness and provides a different stance on the stout with a body much more developed and full in flavor. It also boasts a higher alcohol content than many of its competitors.

And in the spring, there is the Carolina Spring Bock with an almost sweet aftertaste and the highest alcohol content of all the seasonal ales. One of the key concepts behind the “high level of quality” is not only what they put into the beer, but more importantly what they chose to leave out.

“What makes us different then a lot of other breweries — we use no preservatives, and we do not pasteurize our beer,” Zonin said. “It gives us a three-month shelf life, which we think is great considering that most European imports have a shelf life of 12-18 months because they are packed with preservatives or they are very heavily pasteurized.”

Carolina Brewing Company keeps its distributing area to the six major counties in the Triangle area of the state. This allows it to brew a beer without having to add preservatives or pasturize its beer, ensuring that the quality is held to highest possible standards. Some avid beer drinkers will attribute a hangover to the abundance of preservatives in a beer. For the most part, a hangover comes from too much alcohol.

The brewery keeps its prices realistic so that it can compete with the major distributors like Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Co. It attacks sales analysis differently than its competitors.

“Most big breweries substitute another grain for malted barely. We use malted barley as a 100 percent of our grain base, that’s where we get all of our sugar in our beer, where most big breweries substitute anywhere between 30 to 40 percent will be either rice or corn,” Zonin said. “That makes for a much lighter-bodied, lighter-tasting, lighter-colored beer. It’s also a much cheaper volume ingredient, so you can offer the beer at a better price.”

Unlike major breweries, or other local breweries, it takes a passive-aggressive approach to advertising and relies solely on the quality of its beer to do the speaking.

“We never advertise. So we’ve never done a radio ad, never done a billboard, never done anything in any paper. Not all — but a lot — of our competitors do that,” Zonin said.

With the first 10 years under its belt, the company recently went back to 42nd St. and celebrated its anniversary with a self-proclaimed quote — ‘All it takes is a liver and a dream.’ The beer can be found on draft at 140 different locations in the Triangle area, at 80 locations by the bottle and in more than 100 different grocery stores, including Harris Teeter, Whole Foods and Fresh Market.

Andy Maloney, a senior in biology, enjoys drinking the India Pale Ale and has respect for CBC as a company.

“I think the major breweries like Budweiser and Miller put their emphasis on quantity and not quality,” Maloney said. “Carolina Brewery’s beers taste better, and by drinking them you’re supporting North Carolina’s economy — that’s a win-win situation.”

With such breweries like Carolina Brewing Company founded in North Carolina, the ‘Goodness Grows in North Carolina’ label has ground for expanding into the beer cooler and being noted as “Goodness Brewed in North Carolina.”