By Nicole Bayne and Emily Cook
After raising over $10,000 with a Kickstarter campaign, Maltese Brewing Company will open Saturday in Fredericksburg. The owners, firefighters Bobby Cook and Joe Smith, began as homebrewers who noticed similarities between breweries and firehouses.
“There’s a similar feel to firefighting,” Smith says. “Everybody’s open; they answer your questions. There’s no brewery we’ve ever walked into where [the owners] weren’t welcoming you with open arms, just like at a firehouse.”
Detroit native Smith has been homebrewing for eight years and teamed up with his coworker, Panama City-born Cook, four years ago. Cook and Smith both agree that beginning as homebrewers was beneficial because it allowed for trial and error, but their greatest asset is the connection they feel with other local brewers.
“We both saw breweries as competition, but this is totally different from what we were expecting,” Cook says. “If you had a passion for [beer], they had a passion for you. At this one brewery [the owners] walked us around and gave us a how-to brewery course. That really fired up our passion for this craft beer culture.”
Smith and Cook already have experience using ingredients like pineapple and marshmallows in their brews and are eager to bring this experimental mentality to Maltese. But their first recipe was a classic—an all-grain (no powdered extract) Vienna lager Cook says is “easy drinking” like Devil’s Backbone.
The tasting room is designed to emulate a firehouse experience, says Smith. There will be a 10-foot family-style table, a display of the establishment years of all firehouses in the area and a bar painted firetruck red with a hose trim.
Both Smith and Cook will continue fighting fire even after the brewery opens. Cook says the ultimate goal is opening a restaurant, but they’re “starting small. We will work our way up to that.” / Opening Saturday, June 20: Maltese Brewing Company; 11047 Pierson Drive, Suite B, Fredericksburg
