Rob Robinson is the co-founder and president of Waterline Brewing Company in Wilmington, NC. After over 25 years in the military, Rob and his business partner Brian decided to open a brewery in Wilmington. The rest, as they say, is history.
What was the inspiration for the name?
It was what I used to call my home brewing hobby years ago, and it’s associated with shipping, boats and everything coastal. The waterline is the water that runs along the side of the boat, so that’s how it came about.
How long have you been brewing beer?
I started home brewing when I was stationed in Germany back in 1991. [I brewed] off-and-on throughout my career and when I retired in 2014, my business partner and I bought the building in Wilmington. Then Brian Bell and I started brewing and making real beer, turning it from a hobby into a profession.
What made you decide to get into brewing?
Although I was stationed in Germany, the grocery store that we would have to go to was in the Netherlands, so that’s where we had to drive to if we wanted to get American food. Germany, Holland and Belgium really opened up the varieties of beer for me. When I was there I discovered so many different styles and colors and flavors of beer. Belgium, back then, was basically the Disneyland of beer. Coppers and Krieks, and Lambics. I got a hold of Charlie Papzian’s book and thought, “Hey, I can do this.” I started pre-internet, so I was ordering supplies out of a newsletter and writing a check for the supplies I needed.
What is your current production here at Waterline?
We’ve got a five-barrel system and a big cellar of about 160 barrels. We did that on a small scale because Brian and I were both home brewers and we were nervous about going too big. Currently, we average about 1,000 barrels a year.
Do you have plans to change that?
Yeah, we’ve started the process of upgrading to a 20-barrel system. We’ll do that this winter when demand is low enough to be able to switch over.
What makes you different from other beers or brewers?
We’ve got this old 1940s warehouse that Brian and I renovated, so it’s got an old heart-pine feel to it. We kept the original floors and updated electric and water. We’re family friendly and dog friendly. We do live music on the weekends. We’ve been committed to local, live music since we opened. We built a small outdoor stage during COVID. We have solos, duos and trios perform.
What’s your biggest seller?
Our biggest seller is our Kölsch. Legally the Kölsch-style ale. Technically Kölsch can only be brewed in Cologne, Germany. It’s similar to champagne really only coming from Champagne in France. Anything from outside of the region it was named for, is really just putting out a product similar to the ones from those regions.
The difference with Kölsch in Germany is that it’s an ale rather than a lager. It’s a cold-fermented ale. Lagers are hard to do in a small brewery due to the length of time that it takes to finish the beer out. It ties your cellar up for a long time. The Kölsch was a way to get a nice light beer, and it’s turned out to be really popular. Although it’s not a domestic, when someone comes in and asks for something like a domestic, our lightest beer is Kölsch, so that’s the best fit for them.
Where do you get the inspiration for your new beers?
Most of the new ideas come from the staff. They like exploring different styles and different flavors. One of our popular ones is called “Coffee and Cream.” “Coffee and Cream” is a blonde ale with coffee added to it for a little bit of flavor, and lactose for some sweetness. It’s actually a coffee beer, but it comes out of the taps as a mellow orange-hued amber and it smells and tastes like a latte or a cappuccino.
We also do a range of Goses throughout the year. We do a holiday gruit around Christmas time. It’s a cranberry wheat beer with chi and spices and a little habanero for a finish, so it’s pink and it tastes really good, then you get a little bit of a burn at the end. It’s a popular beer with some of our customers. They’ll take home growlers and growlers of it.
Outside of the tap house, where can readers find your beer?
Throughout Wilmington. Mostly Kölsch because it goes with just about anything you want to eat. We go up as far as Topsail, and down into Brunswick County some. We do have some bottle shops from the Raleigh area that will come and pick up kegs as they look throughout the state for new beers from smaller breweries. We’re planning on getting a few kegs up to the State Fair so those will be available at the North Carolina Craft Brewer’s Guild’s location.
Is there anything about you guys that would surprise readers to know?
I served 26 years in the Air Force; 14 years overseas. I did command post work and then ended up in communications doing networking. I’ve been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and some other locations. When I finished, I was doing security assessments for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Washington, DC.
I met the co-founder, Brian Bell, at my last duty station in DC. He was working on the Joint Staff for J3. He was the Pentagon’s policy arm of what we were doing with the security team. We would work together going to [military] bases and doing high-level assessments of their security. We met on a couple of trips and started talking about what we wanted to do when we retired. We both liked the idea of opening a brewery, and we both liked the East Coast. We came to Wilmington and went to the Lighthouse Beer & Wine Festival one year, and saw there was a huge demand. Front Street was the only brewery and there were three others in planning. We saw the demand as people were standing in this thunderstorm for half an hour to get into the festival. The festival only had a couple of breweries. When combining that with Wilmington’s growing population, it just made sense.
Once the building became available we liked the location but Brian wasn’t happy when we first walked in the building, because it was really kind of falling apart. He had a background in construction and he thought I was crazy, but it turned out nice in the end. We share the space with an art gallery named The Art Factory.
When we got into Wilmington, we connected with a young man named Mark Anthony Muller. Mark’s unofficial title was the mayor of downtown Wilmington, because he was so tied-in to the community. He helped us, early on, to get our footing in the community and blend in. He helped us for several years as another owner in the background, and sadly he passed away last December. Mark really helped us develop the business. We actually just had our Octoberfest this past weekend, which is an annual event we do on the first weekend in October, and that whole concept came from Mark.
Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you wish I did?
We do a lot of community involvement. We host a lot of fundraisers for local charities, and we donate to local charities when they’re having their fundraisers. We try to give back to the community as well as be a part of the community. We’re about to celebrate our sixth anniversary in December. Things have changed since we opened in December of 2015. When we opened, we really weren’t ready. We only had one point-of-sale and we never had enough change; I spent most of my time driving around to gas stations looking for $1s and $5s. Our bartenders were all trying to ring in on one cash register. We just didn’t anticipate the demand. It was a good problem, but still a problem.
Waterline Brewing is at 721 Surry Street in Wilmington, NC. They can be reached at 910-777-5599, or info@waterlinebrewing.com. Waterlinebrewing.com
