Where Alaska Meets the Shenandoah: A Spotlight on the Rushing Brothers and Honey and Hops Brew Works
Some businesses feel like they were built for commerce. Others feel like they were built for community. Honey and Hops Brew Works at 212 East Main Street in Front Royal is unmistakably the latter. Walk through the door and you will find honeycomb-shaped tasting tables, a couch with a gaming console anyone can play, regulars who feel more like family than customers, and three brothers from Alaska who somehow ended up making some of the best mead in the mid-Atlantic right here in the Shenandoah Valley.
The Rushing brothers, Ian, Isaac, and Adam, are three of eight siblings who grew up in The Last Frontier with creative parents and an entrepreneurial spirit that showed up early. As kids they dissolved Warhead candies in water and tried to sell the concoction door to door in their neighborhood. They never made much money, but the dream of creating something people wanted to taste stayed with them. Decades later, that dream became one of their most beloved meads.
Ian, the oldest and a former journalist and marketing professional, discovered mead a couple of years before the idea of Honey and Hops took shape. He fell in love with the flavor profiles, the combinations, the unexpected ways honey could be sweet without being cloying, tart without being sharp, complex without being pretentious. He moved to Front Royal, fell in love with the area, and eventually asked his brothers a question that would change all of their lives: what do you think about moving to Virginia and opening a meadery? Isaac's response was simply "A what?" Not long after, all three brothers were in.
They launched with an $11,000 Kickstarter campaign, found a small space, and opened their doors on April 10, 2020, three weeks after Virginia went into lockdown. The pandemic that shut down the world did not stop the Rushing brothers. Within eight months they had outgrown their first location and signed a lease on a space three times the size, right on Main Street where walk-by traffic changed everything.
Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages on the planet, enjoyed by ancient civilizations across China, India, Greece, and Egypt. At its heart it is honey wine, fermented honey and water, but in the hands of Ian, Isaac, and Adam it becomes something far more adventurous. Honey and Hops has released over 50 small-batch flavors, from blueberry and tart cherry to a spicy chocolate Carolina reaper pepper mead that earns its reputation. Their base mead uses clover honey sourced from Sweet Nectar in Stanton, Virginia, about an hour away, and is called Scenic Drive after the road the family once lived on back in Alaska. The Warhead meads, tart and candy-forward, are a direct nod to those childhood door-to-door candy drinks that never quite made the brothers rich but apparently planted a seed worth returning to.
The tasting room itself captures the spirit of the whole operation. Honeycomb-shaped tables sanded down from used electrical spools. A bar, some couches, a gaming console that anyone is welcome to play. Regulars who show up like they are coming home. A treehouse vibe that is open to the whole neighborhood, with no dress code, no pretension, and no reason to be anywhere else for a while. When Headwaters visited, that ease was immediately apparent. This is a place where people relax into themselves, where conversations start between strangers and end between friends, and where the mead is always worth trying something new.
Glasses, flights, and bottles are all available. Open Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 3 to 9pm, Friday from noon to 10pm, and Saturday from noon until close. Closed Wednesday.
Visit honeyandhopsbrewworks.com to learn more about Honey and Hops Brew Works. When you are ready to build a retreat experience that ends with something truly memorable, make Headwaters your first call.
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