Beers Will Be Flowing at the Original Tap Room this Friday!

For those of you who love St. John Brewers and have missed hanging out at the original Tap Room this year, you’re going to love this… Beers will be flowing, yet again, at the original Tap Room this Friday, and we hope to see you all there!

The St. John Brewers will celebrate their 10th anniversary this Friday with a night of beer, food and fun. It’s happening from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at The Tap Room over in Mongoose Junction.

As I’m sure most of you know, The Tap Room was destroyed by a fire last January and has been closed since. A temporary Tap Room has been set up right next door and is a pretty cool little spot.

Curious as to how a couple of guys from the States came to become the best beer brewers on St. John? Here’s their story straight from their website:

The story of St. John Brewers begins when two college classmates quit their jobs to live on the small island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Chirag Vyas, who grew up in Providence, R.I., had been living and working in California as a scientist for NASA. Kevin Chipman, a friend and former roommate from the University of Vermont, worked as a physical therapist at a Boston medical center. In their first two years out of college, they became frustrated by the 9-5 lifestyle that seemingly defined their stateside existence, so the two decided to embark on a Caribbean adventure that would change their lives forever. They quit their jobs, sold their belongings, and purchased one-way tickets to the Virgin Islands. Our First Home

For their first month on the unfamiliar island, Vyas and Chipman bused tables and paid a local $250 a month to sleep on an old sailboat. The boat had no electricity or running water, so they ate by flashlight and stored food on a block of ice – all the while never doubting their choice to live in this tropical turquoise-blue water setting.

The two soon found a cheap apartment to rent and worked their way up to bartending. Hiking to the beach during the day and making island concoctions at night filled most of their time. However, there was something from their stateside lives that they missed on the island: the two fell in love with craft beer from their college days and longed to enjoy that style of beer on St. John. They wanted an alternative to the light lager that dominated the beer scene in the Caribbean. Kevin Perfecting the Recipe

So, like any inventive 20-somethings marooned in vacation paradise, Vyas and Chipman headed over to the public library in the “downtown” area of Cruz Bay and logged on to the Internet. If breweries could make beer, why couldn’t they? A few clicks later, they had ordered a $50 beer-making kit and were on their way.

What was supposed to start out as a hobby quickly turned into a passion, and the two found that brewing consumed most of their free time. They experimented with different varieties – pale ales, stouts and IPA’s – and fine-tuned each until they were happy with their creations. Before long, the two had friends and visitors begging for a taste of the beers they were cooking up. Within a few short years, Vyas and Chipman had perfected their signature recipe for a pale ale with a hint of mango, one of the local fruits grown on St. John. “We knew that we were filling a void in the beer market,” Chipman said, “island-style craft beer.” The fact that they could incorporate a native flavor made it even more exclusive to the island.Woody’s Seafood Saloon begins serving Virgin Islands Pale Ale

They had no bottling facility, so they sterilized large, glass water bottles that they collected from restaurants and used them to house the variety of beers they were creating. As the demand for their beer outgrew their ability to produce locally, the two teamed up with a stateside production partner and decided to distribute their beer to the island restaurants and markets themselves. Getting ready to unload the beer and haul it to St. John

The very first batch of more than 1,300 cases of Tropical Mango Pale Ale arrived on a 40-foot container from their bottling partner in Portland Maine, Shipyard Brewing Company. Chipman and Vyas boarded the car ferry from St. John to St. Thomas and loaded half of the beer in a rented warehouse on St. Thomas, and the other half into a truck to store in their apartment on St. John.

Over the course of the next several months, the days consisted of hand-delivering their signature beer to bars and restaurants using their 1989 Toyota pickup truck and running back to their bartending gigs at night. During what would be one of their last delivery runs, it began to rain and the roads became slick, and their truck slid backward down a hill. The two had to get out of the truck and unload 70 cases of beer into a neighbor’s driveway until the truck was light enough to make it up the hill, then they drove back and forth repeatedly to pick up the rest of the load. On the Barge

Were they ready to quit? “No, we were ready to get a distribution company,” said Chipman. Their driving ethos seemed to be to enjoy life and have fun. “After delivery runs,” Vyas added, “we’d often head to the beach and jump in the ocean to remind ourselves of why we were working so hard.”

Presently after celebrating the 10-year anniversary of brewing that first batch of Tropical Mango Pale Ale, St. John Brewers have gone on to create and bottle several different styles of beer as well as a root beer and an energy drink. Their products are sold throughout the Virgin Islands as well as in several states in the U.S. Additionally, Vyas and Chipman own and operate The Tap Room, the flagship brewpub of St. John Brewers located in the heart of Cruz Bay, St. John. Kevin and Cheech at the beachHere all their styles of craft beer are available to locals and tourists alike, and it is here that they can be found working on their next great brew.

What’s next for Vyas and Chipman? The two are excited to continue expanding their brand and bringing an “island escape in a bottle” (or on draft) to the next island-hoppers or stateside island-dreamers for years to come.